Week-End à Deauville 2011 Parfums de Nicolaï for women

Hmm... this is one weekend that I could have done without. I first tried the original, which came via Paris, and fell in love. I recall it as being a full bodied diva, with a prominent green streak and cracking contrasts.

This new edition is a weekend spent in the 'burbs, and what a shame. Cut lawn grass replaces razor sharp green notes, Glade plug ins replace the oily lushness, and a Japanese economy car parked next to a Ford rounds out the contrast.

Hmmph.

Parfums de Nicolai WEEKEND A DEAUVILLE 2011 initially seems rather MITSOUKO-like (unreformulated, that is...) until a leather note arrives on the scene, after which the composition becomes quite a bit darker and more masculine than I had been expecting—but only for a couple of minutes. In the end, this perfume might best be described as a lightly leatherized chypre. The leather note reminds me of the smell of a finely pebbled leather weekend bag, so the name takes on a sort of trip-to-the-luxurious-countryhouse (the kind with a full staff on hand...) meaning. There is a slightly bitter-green edge to this chypre, evoking fields of long blades of grass, the tips of which have been just slightly toasted under the sun and are waving gently in the ever-so-lightly humid wind which has grazing over a nearby lake.

As I wore Parfums de Nicolai WEEKEND A DEAUVILLE it occurred to me that this really seems like classic Guerlain, back in the good old days before that house's creative management was taken over by industrial chemists and accountants. My understanding is that the Nicolai clan constitutes a limb on the noble tree of the Guerlain family parfumeurs, and I'd say that the proof is in the perfume! This creation smells splendid and definitely evokes memories of the halcyon times when only bona fide perfumes were called perfumes, rather than shower-in-a-bottle, office-ready fruity-floral frags, skin scents, and sugar sprays, along with just about anything else that can be purveyed via bottle as well. Those were the days, too, when perfumers were more apt to be artists than businessmen, what is no longer the case, it seems to me. At this point in the history of perfume, hacks are the rule, not the exception, so discovering something as well-composed and compelling as WEEKEND A DEAUVILLE is a real treat. 3.13.11