05/24/2022
BrianBuchanan
355 Reviews
BrianBuchanan
2
My boy Lollipop
Eau de Monsieur was Annick Goutal’s first release and it’s hard to imagine a more quietly confident debut.
It’s a citrus-mossy woods in the style of the existing models: Pour Monsieur de Chanel and Eau Sauvage, but it takes a different direction to those, with an amber note that warms the woody baseline, and a theme like star anise, pink rubber candy & ice cream wafer.
The rubbery note harks back to Knize Ten and the work of Coty, and the anisic note is a clear reference to Azzaro pour Homme. But, despite the weight of tradition, (along with l’Artisan’s spiced coffee scent Eau du Navigateur that soon followed) Eau de Monsieur opened up a modern gourmand sensibility. This put Goutal in direct opposition to Roudnitska’s anti-gourmand over-ripe melon theme, and way beyond anything in Henri Robert’s non-gourmand Pour Monsieur.
Goutal clearly had the imagination to hold her own against the likes of Robert and Roudnitska (perhaps it was her training as a concert pianist that gave her the power to interpret a given theme) but as a neophyte she didn’t have the technique of a grandmaster and Eau de Monsieur was well blended but rather straightforward (at least compared to Eau Sauvage).
Nevertheless, it had a warm woody citrus and somehow (spicy) biscuit allure – a bit like gourmand Eau Neuve de Lubin crossed with Yohji Homme; subtle, low odour-yield but nice.
Being the product of a conservative industry, perfume progresses in baby steps most of the time, and so it would be easy to write off Eau de Monsieur as just a pleasant tentative masculine that’s none too remarkable. But as Colbourne mentions in relation to l’Eau du Navigateur, this was 80’s niche, or possibly proto-niche from today’s perspective, and the masculine gourmand, which may now seem rather tame was probably quite radical back then.
Regrettably, the original version was replaced by another formula in 2013.
The gods giveth and the gods taketh away.
It’s a citrus-mossy woods in the style of the existing models: Pour Monsieur de Chanel and Eau Sauvage, but it takes a different direction to those, with an amber note that warms the woody baseline, and a theme like star anise, pink rubber candy & ice cream wafer.
The rubbery note harks back to Knize Ten and the work of Coty, and the anisic note is a clear reference to Azzaro pour Homme. But, despite the weight of tradition, (along with l’Artisan’s spiced coffee scent Eau du Navigateur that soon followed) Eau de Monsieur opened up a modern gourmand sensibility. This put Goutal in direct opposition to Roudnitska’s anti-gourmand over-ripe melon theme, and way beyond anything in Henri Robert’s non-gourmand Pour Monsieur.
Goutal clearly had the imagination to hold her own against the likes of Robert and Roudnitska (perhaps it was her training as a concert pianist that gave her the power to interpret a given theme) but as a neophyte she didn’t have the technique of a grandmaster and Eau de Monsieur was well blended but rather straightforward (at least compared to Eau Sauvage).
Nevertheless, it had a warm woody citrus and somehow (spicy) biscuit allure – a bit like gourmand Eau Neuve de Lubin crossed with Yohji Homme; subtle, low odour-yield but nice.
Being the product of a conservative industry, perfume progresses in baby steps most of the time, and so it would be easy to write off Eau de Monsieur as just a pleasant tentative masculine that’s none too remarkable. But as Colbourne mentions in relation to l’Eau du Navigateur, this was 80’s niche, or possibly proto-niche from today’s perspective, and the masculine gourmand, which may now seem rather tame was probably quite radical back then.
Regrettably, the original version was replaced by another formula in 2013.
The gods giveth and the gods taketh away.
