The Armani Prive line has been a maddeningly uneven group of fragrances when it is good it can be very good; Bois D’Encens. Unfortunately they often seem like a slightly different riff on another fragrance. Last year’s “Thousand and One Nights” collection is a good example of that. What is especially difficult is these fragrances come at a price point where high quality ingredients shouldn’t be all you get for your money.  Because of this track record my expectation when a new Armani Prive scent is in front of me is to expect something nice but not original.

Then the new Armani Prive La Femme Bleue landed in my mailbox. La Femme Bleue is a limited edition of 1,000 bottles meant to coincide with the Giorgio Armani  Spring/Summer 2011 collection of the same name. The entire collection was described by Giorgio Armani as:

“Envisaging a journey through the desert, following a Tuareg caravan, the nomad people who have become the esthetical reference for my new couture collection. "Only when you are working with a color, you manipulate it, you learn about all its countless variations. Indigo, matte, charcoal, kohl power, dark, glossy…”

For the fragrance part of the collection Armani turned to Serge Majoullier and he described his creative process this way:

"It’s not easy to translate the idea of deep blue, I found the way by blending oriental and vanilla notes, perfect to evoke a hot starry night; so I added to black iris, which is dark blue in nature and whose scent at times verges on chocolate, a woody background. This way the fragrance is not just floral".

M Majoullier uses that black iris as the central note and surrounds it with rich gourmand notes of chocolate and vanilla all on a foundation of frankincense and woods. What I found particularly amusing is this scent didn’t bring the color blue to mind it felt like a rich dark mahogany brown to my nose.

The opening is the black iris mentioned by M Majoullier. At first sniff it smells a lot like a great orris and as I like that note very much it is very nice. As M Majoullier mentions it eventually starts to take on a chocolate character. More correctly on my skin it comes off like a fine dusty cocoa. The chocolate note arrives and takes that cocoa character deeper and in conjunction with the silvery iris it makes this phase of development alternating between intensely floral and then intensely gourmand. This combination works beautifully. The gourmand nature is enhanced with vanilla and then incense and a mixture of clean light woods finish La Femme Bleue off.

La Femme Bleue has average longevity and average sillage.

Despite the name La Femme Bleue is a distinctly shared fragrance. If you are a lover of iris fragrances and gourmand notes this will delight you no matter your gender. I am hoping La Femme Bleue will signal the beginning of a new type of creativity for the Armani Prive fragrances which rivals the creativity of the couture of which they share a name with.

Disclosure: This review was based on a sample purchased from The Perfumed Court.

–Mark Behnke, Managing Editor

What is your favorite Armani Prive? Your own blue period?

Editor's Note:Blue Period (Periodo Azul) is a term used to define to the works produced by Pablo Picasso between 1901 and 1904, when he painted essentially monochromatic paintings in shades of blue and blue-green, only occasionally warmed by other colors. inspired by Spain but painted in Paris, are now some of his most popular works, although he had difficulty selling them at the time

 

Mark's reference to "riffs" is right on as Miles Davis had an album called Blue Period  a 10 inch vinyl in 1951.Miles played more jazz in Detroit than in any other city