Niki de Saint Phalle Niki de Saint Phalle 1982 Eau de Parfum

About what feels like 100 years ago, I had this fragrance and now a mini has fallen into my lap.
Heidiwitzka! This is a scent that you don’t forget. A typical 1980s! That quirky decade with the loud fashion, teased hairstyles, shoulder pads, carrot pants, lace socks in stilettos, and thunderous fragrances with usually a sillage of 15 meters and a minimum durability of 42 hours and 47 minutes.
Dear young fragrance fans, if it weren't for us "old" folks here in the forum, you might never learn about many lost treasures.

Niki de Saint Phalle (1930 -2002) was a French-Swiss painter and sculptor. Some of you may know her quirky figures and sculptures. Colorful and very eccentric.

Niki once said about herself: "I was an angry young woman, but there are many angry young men and women who still do not become artists. I became an artist because there was no alternative for me - consequently, I didn't have to make a decision. It was my destiny. In other times, I would have been locked away in an asylum forever - but I was only under strict psychiatric supervision for a short time, with ten electroshocks, etc. I embraced art as salvation and necessity.” (Source Wiki)

This fragrance is just like that: Quirky start! Very minty! Green-fruity! Impressive!
Like a 1980s fragrance, it is stuffed with everything the perfumer had left. Under the motto: Just throw it all in!
Despite the floral flash, there is no sweetness, just overwhelming, colorfully screaming!

For a moment, Niki reminds me of “Chapeau Bleu” by Marina Picasso. Similarly abstract and elusive. But Chapeau Bleu is an oriental, and Niki is not.
Only late does it reveal itself as a leathery, deep unfathomable chypre.

Such fragrances no longer exist today. I will not go hunting for a larger bottle, as the fragrances still floating around on the web are weighed in gold, and one can never be sure to catch an original or a tipped vintage.