Precious Ore

Michael Morsetti’s Or et Noir (1949) is a rose scent to be reckoned with. After weeks of admiring Edouard Fléchier’s incomparable Une Rose (2003), I detect a marked family resemblance between the two. Both are cool, luscious and dark, with sweet-oily rose layered over woods and spices. Both stretch their wearer’s expectation of how roses smell. Sad, isn’t it, that roses are so often relegated to the corsage- or nursing-home schools of fragrance? Something in Or et Noir triggers faraway memories of my next-door neighbor pruning her rose bushes while I looked on holding a tall, perspiring glass of iced tea. Rosebud, cold wet glass, green thorny stem and dirty gardening glove become one in my mind, projected back onto the scrim of lost time where so many faces are now assembled. That’s the thing about Caron perfumes: they kindle a nostalgia in us, like a Grès gown or a Verdura cuff. Never “museum,” always chic in that eternal sort of way, with just a tinge of pathos, so that what so often remain glittering surfaces become limpid pools waiting to be sounded. Notes: Bulgarian damask rose, centifolia rose and geranium; Turkish rose, lilac and carnation, oakmoss and woody amber.

To order, contact Diane Haska at the New York Caron boutique/Phyto Universe, 212 308 0270.