1986
Jean Guichard
Parfum de Peau leaves me with mixed emotions. This a perfume with multiple sharply distinct personalities, and it is hard for me to decide if I like the entire experience or if it fails to come together as a coherent whole. This review is based on a parfum mini, a tiny cobalt blue version of the beautiful helix bottle that fits upside down into a small plastic box. I think this is vintage, because I don't believe the parfum is still available, but I am not certain of its exact age. I see other minis online that are frosted glass rather than blue. On me. PdP opens with an acrid and peppery smell of marigolds (the scent that makes marigolds a natural pest repellent in the garden). Luckily this opening doesn't last very long, perhaps ten minutes, so I don't drive away house pets and family members. The next phase is a classic strong leather. At this point, PdP smells a lot like Cabochard and Azuree to me. The leather phase fades gradually, in about an hour or two, but it is eventually replaced by the third, final, and longest lasting phase of PdP on me (about 10 hours or more...this stuff really lasts!) which is a slightly sweet and smokey bouquet of flowers (with no single floral note standing out forcefully). There is a very faint tang of clean, salty sweat in the background, but I get no more leather in the PdP drydown, unlike Cabochard and Azuree, which remain lovely leathers to the end. PdP is a fascinating, unusual scent that surprises you throughout its long wear time, but it may be too moody for me.
