Miss

Miss Habanita

Molinard 1994 Eau de Toilette

For the purposes of this review, I have Miss Habanita on my right hand and Mama Habanita on my left hand. Never have a mother and daughter (I'm not even sure that was the intention here LOL) been more mismatched.

Miss Habanita opens with a deluge of sweet Muscat grapes and a bowlful of freshly sliced white peaches. It reminds me of a drink I had once at a restaurant in New York by name of Delmonico's, right across the way from the Plaza Hotel, called a Bellini. This concoction was made with white peach juice and sickeningly sweet Spumante ... blech and double blech!!! I am completely off fruit in fragrances when represented in this fashion. It's like drinking a glass of Muscat d' Alexandrie ... tooth-ache inducing.
When compared to the grande dame Habanita, this spotty sixteen year old should rather have stayed home. Habanita is sexy and a little wanton, inspiring one to grand gestures of "champagne pour tout le monde" and dancing giddily atop the bar in a Cuban nightclub, cigar in one hand and cuba libre in the other!! Miss Habanita on the other hand (teehee) is like Saffy from Absolutely Fabulous ... dull as dishwater when compared to her delinquent mother Edina.
The sweet fruit notes of this composition continue to soar well into the dry-down, trampling rough shod over any attempts from the flowers or woods to even get a word in edgewise. Then the Vanilla takes over, continuing this saccharine fest ad nauseum.

So much more could have been done with Miss Habanita ... sadly, this is the first Molinard creation I have tried that has left me totally disappointed.

After trying it on paper, wearing Miss H was a big surprise.
On paper, a note of milky peach - backed by a ylang ylang bouquet - is very prominent. It doesn't tie in with the chypre base, and weird notes like cardboard and oily biscuit find their way through.
But on skin, an acid fruitiness tarts up the peach and the base notes coalesce into a roasted spicy-woodiness, which may have been unintended (this is a dark and part-used sample, clearly a vintage specimen) but the effect is as welcome as it's unexpected.
I have to say I find the milky peach a bit sickly, and it strikes me as a blatant hook, but when Miss Habanita is worn - and the peach note blends with the mix - it becomes a bit more palatable. The drydown is peachy iris with moss and biscuity musk, the interesting burnt notes having faded away.
As a peachy chypre this isn't going to win any awards for originality (Mitsouko 1919) but it goes it's own way and makes a fairly decent job of it (sickly peach or no).

3*-

Vintage carded sample

Here, no frightened husband barricades the bedroom door and windows to prevent a completely unhinged wife from pouncing on him. SHE, the man-killing hybrid, is not out and about. Here, SHE does not lick blood from her lips, and he can sleep with the window open. Please read the comments on Habanita ;-)
Why this well-behaved and admittedly beautiful scent is called Miss Habanita is a mystery to me. If Habanita is the bloodthirsty vampire, then Miss Habanita is a 13-year-old wearing suspenders, plagued by puberty. In any case, I would have given the fragrance a different name, as it causes confusion. This is not Habanita light or for young misses. That said, I still like it, and it bears some resemblance to the mysterious floral scent Molinard from the same perfume house.
But the Miss is a pretty Miss, who does not tear men apart or run across rooftops at night. She wears a fluttery shirt, slippers with pom-poms, and shyly flutters her eyelashes. Underneath her fluttery shirt, fine grapes and clean scents waft out, a very clean Miss.
When she then tiptoes into the bedroom in her fluttery shirt, she wiggles her frilly-bottomed rear a little and exudes delicate flowers, feminine, a bit of white jasmine, sweet peach, and to make the rear wiggling even more flirtatious, a hint of naughty ylang-ylang.
The pretty one has never ripped her husband's shirt off his back. Great fiery initiative is foreign to her. She is pretty and attractive, so she lets herself be nailed.
Everything is very cultured, even the aftermath. Even the sheets are still smooth, and the bedpost smells of sandalwood and very clean green vetiver.
It has never really burned here.
Fine scent, and thank you Michelangela for the decant. I must also give the female side another go. But I no longer have a fluttery shirt.

Well, I have long since outgrown the age of being a Miss, although there are probably still English ladies today who are 85 and unmarried and therefore still allow themselves to be called Miss.

But this Miss is certainly not referring to Miss Habanita. This is a little fragrance that - when it grows up - wants to become a scent. Since it already exists in Habanita, that could take a veeeeeery long time....

The scent is light, so light that I might use it on hot spring days and in summer, but more as a refresher than as a perfume.

The opening and heart notes are one and gently fruity-floral. Miss Habanita is extremely close to the skin, meaning it can really only be perceived when sniffing directly at the wearer's skin. I consciously say "wearer," because I absolutely cannot imagine this little water on a man.

In my opinion, Miss Habanita is more of a scent for very young ladies, perhaps around 10 years old. It should come across very pleasantly, as children smell many things more intensely than adults.

The scent lasts for a few hours, but as I said, very close to the skin. There is hardly any development; the lightly fruity-floral impression remains intact. Sandalwood gives it a softness and pleasant sweetness in the end. Somehow, it feels calming and sleep-inducing to me.

I've got it, that's it! A sleep scent...

Molinard fragrances, the ones I could get to know, have an interesting common characteristic: they develop slowly, very slowly, they "work and unfold". Despite the fact that I usually recognize the entire composition quickly, with these, one needs a lot of patience to experience everything, often for hours.
The Miss is particularly beautiful in summer.
Rare ingredients, muscat grapes - something extraordinary that enchants, fizzy like a grape soda drink, refreshing and sweetish.
Then, it takes hours for a soft, papery vanilla to establish itself, and the drydown is the third surprise, an elegant woody-cool finish, so typical for chypre perfumes.
Excellent quality and a good price, recommended to all who prefer "old style in new form".

If there should be a color to better describe the fragrance, it is apricot to purple, with a gray-green finish.