Fragrance Reviews

Prudence Paris: Collection Impériale

07/06/15 09:23:26 

by: Evgeniya Chudakova

Atrbazan.com      The Perfume Master in Iran

I always admired how harmonious are the fragrances by Prudence Paris. Harmoniously correlated one with another and with their creator's—Prudence Elisabeth Kilgour's—image. The new collection is no exception: the six fragrances embraced by bottles of imperial dusty gold incarnate the same beauty and modest majesty that I always find in Prudence herself. 

Prudence Elisabeth told me that the inspiration for creating this collection came after her first ever visit to the Urals—to Ekaterinburg, Russia. She was fascinated, as it was so different: different landscape, different mood than St. Petersburg, very different mood than Moscow.

Recently Soirées Blanches—the fragrance for St.Petersburg—was created and Mrs. Kilgour decided to create something special for Ekaterinburg as well.  While  talking to journalists, she was asking what comes to their minds first when they think about Ekaterinburg and everybody noted the Imperial Romanov family. But she didn't want to use this name and exploit the tragedy. But, when she got back to France she thought, what if I do it in a different way? Discretely, not emphasizing it. That's how the Imperial Collection appeared. It was a discrete form of tribute. Without  personalizing  it, just a gentle tribute to the family, in a subtle way, with respect. Because, as Mrs. Kilgour said, when she was there she felt heavy and really sad.

As I recently noticed in one of previous reports from Esxence '15, the new collection by Prudence Paris is dedicated to the Imperial Family of Russia, killed during the October Revolution of 1917. There are no names on the bottles, just numbers. All the fragrances are of similar character and style: velvety, dense, deep and slightly dusty, like heavy velvet curtains. They all deserve long reviews, but unfortunately I can just remember my first and only try of each scent during Esxence '15.

Composition No.1 - a scent of royal elegance  with a groundbreaking chypre base; severe leather and tobacco in No. 2; talcum, fresh almond and sweet powder in No. 6; a slightly light-minded floral roundelay in No. 4; modest-feminine No. 5 and No. 3scents ... they all smell of luxury and desolation at the same time. Though Prudence said that there is no direct reference and the compositions are inspired by Ekaterinburg landscapes, my imagination was tamed by the scents' mood and showed absolutely unambiguous images. The magnificent empty Winter Palace, the heavy silk of baldachins and the tiny porcelain of fine cups on an antique chest of drawers, giant ballrooms with high windows and brilliantly polished parquet floors that seem to breathe the hot air of noisy balls and to bluntly feel the changes ahead with their blood, and gunpowder, and hungry shining eyes. It's a curdling beauty, air before the revolution. And it really says more than needed for a fragrance. So just some minor accords can turn an idyllic landscape into the scene of forecoming drama.

But it is beautiful.

No.1
plum, bergamot, peach
cinnamon, cloves, immortelle, jasmin, rose, ylang-ylang
chypre accord, cumin, grey amber, white musk, oakmoss, oud, patchouli, sandal

No. 2
cedar, bergamot
leather, saffron, jasmine, rose, incense
olibanum, tobacco, oud, cistus, juniper wood, cloves

No. 3
orange blossom, saffron, red berries
jasmine Sambac, pear, osmantus
olibanum, oud, vanilla, cedar, patchouli, benzoin

No. 4
bergamot, neroli, tarragon, orange flower
ylang-ylang, carnation, jasmine Sambac, Damascene rose
sandalwood, iris, musk, benzoin, oud, Tonka beans

No. 5
mandarin, ylang-ylang, rosewood, galbanum
tuberose, jasmine Sambac, lily, Damascene rose, narcissus, carnation
amber, olibanum, oud, benzoin, sandal, patchouli, vanilla, oakmoss 

No. 6
wild berries, cherry
carnation, Damascene rose, iris, almond, tea leaf
opopanax, Tonka bean, oud, amber, white musk, vanilla