Last week, I e-mailed Serge Lutens in Paris about the Chypre Rouge mystery. Why did my sample bottle smell completely unlike the Chypre Rouge sample I had from some years ago? Did they change the formulation? Is the export scent different than the scent sold in Europe?
I received a reply to my question within an hour of sending it. There was no reply, actually, but an offer to send me a new sample.
When I got home today, my neighbor stopped by with a package that had the wrong address on it and had needed a signature. Thank goodness she was home, for it would have been sent back! I was stumped as to what the package was. It was sent overnight mail and the return address was JFK airport. When I opened it, there was another padded envelope inside. And inside that, was a beautiful velvet pouch containing 15ml of Chypre Rouge, a regular sample of Chypre Rouge, and a holiday card from the Serge Lutens shop in France.
Well, the sample and the decant both smell like the Chypre Rouge I remember; rich, sweet and complex. So, the mystery still remains. Why did the other sample smell so different?
I'm glad I asked, for I've now got a lovely small bottle of Chypre Rouge. And I must commend their customer service for sending me not just one sample, but two, so I can compare. They are both the same. Thank you, Ms. Ardant, and thank you to Maria, who suggested I contact the company directly.
As for the tassel, I'm not sure why, but when I asked myself "what image do I want to use for this post?" I thought "tassels!" I wish I had found a more complex tassel to display, but I gave up after a few minutes. The art of tassel making is a wonderful one. If you like tassels, I recommend The Tassels Book. You can buy it on Amazon for only $4.95. I tried my hand at making small tassels some years back. It was a lot of fun, but when I started to want to make some really big ones, the price of supplies seemed exorbitant, especially when one can find some truly baroque and beautiful ones at TJ Maxx for under ten bucks.
4 comments:
I'm so glad you got such a good response from SL--and now you have the scent you wanted. :-)
I think that vial must have been mislabeled at the factory, which begs the question of what's actually in it! Since it came from Aedes, I can't believe it's bogus. Oh well ...
I agree that the wrong juice was in that vial. It smelled very familiar. I have a lot of Lutens samples - one of these days I'm going to sit down and figure out which one it is.
You sent it to me - have you sniffed the "real" one? If not, I should send the new sample to you!
Yay, I'm so happy you got a bottle of Chypre Rouge out of all that confusion:)Now tell me, does that sample your got directly from SL have a celery note in it?
Nika
I guess I haven't sniffed the real one. I thought another samp of CR had passed through my hands, but I don't remember it being so wildly different from the one I sent. Either my memory fails me, or I got 2 bad samples!
Anyway, I fear the real Chypre Rouge would be wasted on me. I tend to favor only the wimpy SLs, like Un Lys. Share the good stuff with a fellow fan, or save it to tuck into your regulation TSA baggie the next time you travel ;-)
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