Ylang in Gold M. Micallef for women

To werena :

As you said, "posh" restaurants use gold Blätter to decorate food, and that is so ridiculous.
For me, any attempt of using gold where it should not be used is ... posh (I like the way you used that word), careless view of marketing, whatever the domain could be (fragrances, food, .... ). It is just directed to attract people's eye and make them spend $$$ money for a product which quality may not be the first care.
All that is just so useless.

I forgot to say in my comment below that you can easily buy such thin gold, and you could try to decorate your own perfume in this way. (I do not know if the spray mechanism would still work well though.) Just order what is known in german as "Blattgold" (gold leaf, gold foil, beaten gold. Blattgold is used for gold-plating. There are several companies in germany which produce Blattgold in various qualities. For example, the company Wilhelm Wasner (google for it) sells little booklets with 25 sheets of size 8 by 8 centimeters for about 30-40 euros (that ends up in a price of about 2 eurocents per square centimeter). They sell also gold powder. In this form the gold is more expensive, two grams cost about 180 euros (whereas 2 grams of gold might amount to about 80 euros). -
If you like a liquor containing true gold flakes look in Wikipedia for "Danziger Goldwasser". There are also posh restaurants which decorate food with Blattgold.

What's all the excitement about? In an interview Martine Micallef said the perfume contains a dust of nacre or mother of pearl, and that is probably extracted from dropped sea shells. So, no gold at all. But if it were gold, how worthy would that be? Gold can be rolled out so that it is not thicker than a tenth of a micrometer. Let's assume a bottle of Ylang contains a square centimeter of such a thin gold layer. This square centimeter would then cost at current gold prices: about one cent. Now calculate the price of the perfume with and without gold! The price of a perfume does not get calculated from what it is made of, not even with the inclusion of packaging and marketing, but simply from what people are willing to pay for it. Luca Turin estimates that the stuff perfumes are made off usually amounts to two to three percents of what it costs.

To pollyjean :

Well, if gold can be "recycled" that way, why not ...

But the question of the price still remains : putting pure gold dust in a fragrance is a clearly good excuse to ask for tremendous prices.
Moreover, it adds nothing to the juice : the juice is the notes, not the gold dust or whatever powder that could be added to it.

What bothers me is that marketing move.
Perfumes are expensive enough on themselves : no need to put gold in them to pretend to sell them at higher indecent prices.

It's not really a waste. Gold dust used in applications such as this one could never be made into jewelry. It starts off in pieces too small to become anything super useful anyway, so spritz away!

To janina :

LOL !
It is sure that when it comes to gold, it is way more affordable in a dust form than in a necklace one ! ;o)

It is absolutely useless to waste such a precious and overexpensive material that way though. Apart from making the price of the bottle rise in a tremendous way .... :-D

This time I really like the shimmering powder, I saw it on my skin, it's quite discret ;o)

La poudre d'or, c'est du gaspillage. Quand je me parfume j'en met dans le cou, un nuage sur les cheveux et enfin sur mes vêtements au niveau des épaules et je n'ai pas envie de briller !!! Dommage j'adore l'ylang ;( J'espere qu'il sortira un jour sans la poudre.

To Euse :

For sure, I won't buy it.

What disturbs me is not the fact of the shimmery powder (even if it's not very practical, but that's not the point) but well and truly the use of pure gold to get that shimmery powder here : it is a complete waste, which is a true pity.
Adding that pure gold powder adds nothing to the juice : gold has no olfactive note. It is smply a marketing tool in order for them to have a pretext to
charge their fragrances a lot.
And that is stupidity.

This fragrance may be well-done from an olfactory point of view BUT I will never encorage the ridiculous, totally indelicate, inappropriate and completely baloney initiative of wasting pure gold that way.

I am normally not fan of the micaleff perfumes, but I want to defend them a bit, cause I thought the earlier commenter was harsh.
Putting all kind of shimmery stuff into the perfume is not really new, there is a niche brand doing that which works quite well. You can see giorgio armani's new perfume as well. I agree that this is a different philosophy of perfumery, some people care only about the scent, some more for the whole packaging and message.
I am not sure how much they are selling the perfume for, but I guess if you dont want a perfume with real gold powder, than you just wont buy it.

Stupidity in a bottle : what is the need to put real gold powder in a perfume ?! Apart from, of course pretending to sell it at a stellar and way overpriced amount of money ....