If there is a disappointment, I have in most of the designer perfumes it is that they don’t connect as strongly to the clothing side as I would wish. There are so many innovations the great couture designers have made with the use of fabric I want some perfumes to mimic that. This is not a never seen kind of thing it is mostly a rarely seen event. Yves Saint Laurent Grain de Poudre tries to be one.
Grain de Poudre is part of the Le Vestiaire de Parfums collection launched in 2015. Each perfume is inspired by some aspect of Yves Saint Laurent’s fashion life from design to studio. It has produced seventeen previous perfumes to Grain de Poudre. My overwhelming reaction has been safe perfume extoling a visionary designer. These do not do justice to the aspects of M. Saint Laurent’s life they are inspired by. They have mostly been about producing a varied collection of common styles of perfume. Grain de Poudre doesn’t stray too far outside those lines.
Quentin Bisch
Grain de Poudre is named after the wool and mohair blend used by M. Saint Laurent in his blazers. The classic Le Smoking tuxedo jacket with which M. Saint Laurent revolutionized the concept of women wearing a tuxedo was made of grain de poudre fabric. It is a sleek kind of wool with a tactile density attached to it. Perfumer Quentin Bisch was asked to make a perfume based on it in Grain de Poudre.
Good woolen fabrics have the same kind of animalic scent as leather does. It is different, a little more funky than the more acceptable cowhide scent. M. Bisch chooses to use a leather accord in the base of Grain de Poudre to stand in for that quality. What comes before adds a texture to it all.
Grain de Poudre opens on a combination of violet leaves and black pepper. This is a top accord M. Bisch has used previously in Ex Nihilo Cuir Celeste. There he kept it light. In Grain de Poudre it is rougher. The black pepper rasps across the silvery violet leaves. It turns a sticky shade of green as coriander and sage add even more texture to this opening. Some animalic musks precede the suede leather accord in the base. This is the sleek feel of grain de poudre fabric made funkier by the other ingredients.
Grain de Poudre has 10-12 hour longevity and average sillage.
Grain de Poudre is still like most of the other La Vestiaire de Parfums entries in that it never veers outside of safe boundaries. It is better than most everything else in the collection because M. Bisch does try to get a little wooly bully without knocking things over.
Disclosure: This review is based on a sample provided by Neiman Marcus.
–Mark Behnke
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