Cicada!
Blessed are you!,
on your bed of earth
dying drunk of light.
(Federico Garcia Lorca)
An amazing brand named
N-Cigale – poetic, sculptural, decorative, jewelry producing and, above all, aromatic – was recently born in Marseille. To open this business in 2010, its owner and art-director Patrick Veillet had to flee from the stone prison of Paris and move to the sea and sun of the city of Marseille. Now, Marseille houses the N-Cigale headquarter (at 5 Rue de la Prison) in a prestigious quarter of Marseille's Hotel de Ville, between historic buildings from the XVIth - XVIIIth centuries. N-Cigale means Nouvelle Cigale - a new cicada - and the name has a deep meaning for the brand's creator.
In Chinese philosophy, cicadas symbolize resurrection and rich Chinese people were buried with jade cicadas in their mouths to ensure a happy afterlife and resurrection (since people found that cicadas live underground for a long time before they take off, after 13, 17 or 19 years). Cicadas in feng shui are considered a symbol of protection and longevity, of good luck restoration but also of creative thoughts and great ideas, which is why it is worn on clothes as an amulet and placed at home or in the office as a guard. In ancient Greece, cicadas were considered the emblem of Apollo, a symbol of beauty, art and creativity. In Latin America, an Mariachi hymn is dedicated to the cicada that will sing until its death. Starting to sing at dawn, cycadas became a symbol of eternal life in Korea and India, Japan and China. This symbolism has acquired a special reputation in France, where Apollinaire and La Fontaine, Louis Aragon and Saint-Exupery, Eluard and Ronsard used the image of carefree cicadas and the beauty of their summer songs in their poems. The famous glass designer René Lalique made luxurious crystal and glass perfume bottles, vases, brooches and boxes using cicada images.
The bottles of
N-Cigale follow these iconic works by Lalique and go even further. Surprisingly, the angular new bottles look more natural (and biotechnological at the same time) than the classic art-deco bottles. They are all artifacts from the future, in origami style, made from dark tinted mirrors; heavy and mysterious polished objects. The recognizable iconic bottles can work as Feng Shui charms, imitating paperweights in futuristic spaceships – while packaged they resemble books that form a library of six volumes.
It should be noted that these are not the first bottles by Patrick Veillet. Before starting his own project he designed some perfume bottles for Chloé, Chopard, Jil Sander, Thierry Mugler, as well as some jewelry and accessories for the Chanel, Hermès and Jean Paul Gaultier catwalks. The
Only The Brave Diesel fist bottle and the
Kingdom Alexandre McQueen egg-heart are his most famous works.
Patrick calls his N-Cigale perfumes “fragrant songs”, Les Chants Parfumés, without mentioning the name of the perfumer. He wanted to take three of the most popular and even over-used perfume notes, worn out to the level of air fresheners, and make new fragrances to revive their glory. The notes of pine, lavender and fig were chosen to return to us, just like cicadas emerge from their underground life every 13 years. The result gave him twice as many fragrances – it happened that Patrick was unable to choose between the two proposed options for each theme.
Black Lavender in the middle of the night is a moonlight serenade. An exercise in finding a bridge to the opposite olfactory pole. Take transparent cardamom and coriander, then enhance them with sweet citron soda pop. Locate the opposite pole – in this perfume it`s the sweet osmanthus amber base. The space between start and base is a smooth mosaic of warm, spicy, balsamic, smoky and woody notes. You will have lost completely what the start notes of the fragrance were and it contains much more warm, black violet and tobacco smoke than the purity and freshness of lavender. Woody, spicy, oriental
Black Lavender has a euphemism-like name, as if Black Violette was suddenly forbidden to use. However, if you look for it, you can find the lavender in it. But people will love the perfume for the other notes, like for example the dirty leathery accents, the oily molecules and the New Year's Eve warm embrace in the drydown.
Start notes: Cardamom, Cloves, Chilli pepper, Lemon, Grapefruit;
Heart notes: Patchouli, Violet, Smoked tea;
Base notes: Vetiver, Osmanthus, Amber, Iris, Woods.
Obviously, this lavender perfume was conceived as a cicada song of a bright noon, full of solar energy – if it would not throw that energy into loud song, the insect could blast. The perfumer failed to depart entirely from pure lavender soap and air-freshener connotations. Sometimes it seems that you are in a lush garden of orange blossom after a cold shower, with a glass of Pastis on ice, and sometimes you are afraid of closing your eyes – if you open them again, you could be in someone else's bathroom, to everyone's embarrassment. Cold lavender is supported by bergamot and neroli, some transparent synthetics and incense – but in general, this is a summer masculine fougère, quite an energetic and modern variation on the classic Brut theme, that perfectly fits Marseille or Cote d`Azure coastal vacations. The drydown is rather warm.
Lavande Velours N-CigaleStart notes: Anise, Orange blossom, Bergamot;
Heart notes: Lavender, Frankincense, Violet;
Base notes: Tonka bean, Cashmeran, Musk, Vetiver.
This oriental version of figs tells us the tropical story of a wicker basket of dried fruits, served with vanilla beans, tiare flowers and a coconut-milk dessert. It reminds me of sweet coconut toffees, colored green or brown, that are common in Thailand or Malaysia, and if you have been in coconut plantations in South East Asia and Oceania, you probably tasted it. A tropical Monoi accord of gardenia flowers in coconut oil comes across especially vivid next to the backdrop of coumarin and the sweet, light and ambery drydown. I cannot wrap my mind around it – whether it`s dessert or tanning. For girls with a sweet-tooth.
Figue Orientale N-CigaleNotes: Citrus accord, Dried pears, White flower bouquet, Vanilla, Violet, Amber, Incense, Woody accord
This is a beautiful green fresh fragrance, most of which you can make by your own hands. Stemone and gamma-octalactone – this basic chord has been on amateur perfumer forums for years; add Menthe oil or Galbanum oil, Black pepper or Cardamom, White musks, Hedione and Iso E Super. If you find some Paradisamide or Ultrazur in a drawer – cautiously, you can add them to imitate a breeze. Obviously, this fragrance is the trial to the task of creating the smell of morning fig leaves, or cicadas chirping in the natural shade of fig trees. Its advantages: the fragrance's sharpness and durability are worthy of a man's character. Figue Fresh can help to remember your youth of the XXth century and the first time you wore
Dune pour Homme Christian Dior.
Figue Fresh N-CigaleNotes: Pepper, Peppermint, Pear, White Lotus, Sea iodine accords, White woods, Musk
The smell of the Mediterranean calanques deserved a special perfume. This vivid, spicy, woody-ambery
Pin des Calanques is an evening song of cicadas on the coast. Salty skin, some sunscreen on sun-kissed bodies, fresh camphor and teardrops of pine tar bleeding from the summer heat, tanned people watching the sunset over the calanque, while a boy does some cleaning and polishing of their leather shoes. Another five minutes and they will go for tapas throughout the neighbor village and find some noisy tanned company. And then an elegant old lady goes by, with a classic oriental perfume of such phenomenal beauty that one of them breaks away and runs after her, to ask about the perfume. He`s waving his hands around her, trying to ask his questions with no language, then comes back to the crowd to report that it`s something called
L`Heure Bleue. It may seem strange to hear that name at this evening hour.
We encountered this mysterious chord in many niche incense perfumes. Fresh, spicy elemi with bleached aldehydes make the incense spicy cold at the beginning, and fans of unusual fragrances would not recognize it this way. Cold and wet marble boulders, churches and cemetery monuments should smell like this. You have to wait a long time until the extreme freshness will be replaced with something warm, musty and woody. Positive moment: this mystic pine is very stable and does not smell of waxed parquet, keeping close to the
Zagorsk edition of the Series 3: Incense from Comme des Garçons. Negative moment: it does not smell like something new and original, and the incense theme waits for its renovation.
The bottles' volume is 120 ml, the European price is 155 EUR. N-Cigale is presented in the Marseille boutique N-Cigale and in Sens Unique, Paris.
