Pas de Chat Odette Parfum Co. 2023

Well guys, we've reached peak vanilla. I'm the opposite of a beastmode scent kind of woman-- I love subtle gourmands. Anything that won't make my head hurt after five minutes. So stuff like Outremer's Vanille is ranked pretty high in my book. And now, she has a sister!!!! Pas de Chat is a sweet, fluffy vanilla. A hot-out-the-oven vanilla cake with no frosting, only powdered sugar. You're eating it on a sunny fall day, surrounded by warm blankets and your cat... who still smells like cashmere and hay despite eating bowl full of raw salmon just a few minutes ago.

It's such a nice fragrance! Will I get a full bottle? Likely not, since my mind still can't 100% get down with the vaguely-spicy-gourmand lifestyle, but maybe I'll opt for a travel size. But don't let my reluctance deter you, folks-- this a great perfume. Perfect for cat ladies, femme lesbians, and femme lesbian cat ladies.

This perfume is just so absolutely delightful and comforting to me. I feel elegant and put together. Its sweet but not choking, its slightly musky and powdery but not dusty. I feel like the embodiment of a kittens birthday party. Just joyful, wistful cake and fur. It was the first sample I ordered and received got in my perfume journey and thought " what was the point of ordering the others? This is my signature scent now" i love it so so much. Can I say it smells like a straight cat? Nope, its not meant to be straight cat- but it does make me think of the musky comforting smell you get from kissing their soft heads.

Odette perfumes are so hard to get a hold of. I wish they were sold in more places or shipped worldwide.

The opening of this scent to me is a gorgeous, sweet, iced vanilla birthday cake. As it dries down it becomes musky. I still get the sweet vanilla, but the musk is the strongest in the dry down. I wanted this as a comforting, self care scent really. It isn’t a scent I’d wear out, but one I would wear for myself when I’m home. As someone who grew up with cats and misses them terribly, the dry down does smell like cat paws. It isn’t 100% but it’s near enough for me. This is a skin scent but it’s cute and cuddly.

If you see “kitten fur” next to iso e super, you have to know what to expect. Every literal note here is *very* easy to pick out, and so the fantasy falls flat to me. This is a familiar — but not your typical — “TV static” woody sweet musk. It’s reminiscent of Tonka 25 from Le Labo. I sense a little ambrette, maybe; a flirty musky quality. This absolutely works for some, but is maybe not so much my taste.

Overall, it’s a Creme Brûlée in a wooden ramekin. Very coquettish and decadent but in an almost unsettling and absurd kind of way — I think it’s because of how obviously synthetic a lot of it is despite its very “pretty” accords. Not as much of a standout as I had heard, but I guess I sort of expected that based on personal taste. Lapinou is 100 times better to me, but I have seen people turn their nose up at that for all sorts of different reasons too; so hey, to each their own!

Picture your cat, very sleepily lounging in their fluffy bed under a stream of sunlight coming in through the window. You have sheer pink curtains and your house is clean but lived in, so a bit of dust and cat fur is suspended in the beam of light and it sparkles in the air. You’re relaxing on the couch, reading an old book with yellowed pages and lovingly observing your cat while your mom bakes your favourite childhood treat in the kitchen.

I can’t get enough of this!!! The opening is very peppery and papery primarily, with a very pale woody note and a dark dry vanilla. There’s a spice that I think is cinnamon and the cake note smells like madeleines. There’s a soft and fuzzy quality, but I’m not totally sure if it’s fur. It’s more like a warm and spicy baby powder. A faint doll head accord lingers deep in the background from the tonka, almost undetectable, but it’s there and I love it. It makes the scent even more comforting than it already is by adding an extra element of nostalgia.

I think this is a great “don’t have to think about it” type of scent, like you could wear it anywhere and it would be appropriate. I think it’s my favourite vanilla scent in the game (as someone who’s not crazy about vanillas). I still don’t know if it truly smells like cat fur, but I think it might get closer after an hour of wear. I got my cat to give it a sniff to see if she liked it or found jt familiar and her reaction was extremely neutral, so the jury is still out. I do see what they were going for though, I find cats to smell very clean and lightly sweet and spiced, but also a little bit dusty. At least that’s how I think I remember my old cat smelling, the current cat doesn’t love to be cuddled. Regardless of whether it smells like fur or not, they nailed it as a warm and fuzzy comfort scent.