I’m a lifelong Lolita Lempicka fan, the Eau de Parfum Original by Annick Ménardo is one of my fetish scents and sits alongside Bulgari Black, Hypnotic Poison, Body Kouros, Patchouli 24 and Bois D’Armenie in the OMG I LOVE ANNICK MENARDO section of the Foxy scented study. I always have bottles of Lolita Lempicka in my collection, the original, the twisted chewed Au Masculin and the meltingly gorgeous L’Eau en Blanc, a diaphanous essay in veiled almonds and nuzzling opacity. The bottles are fab of course, little fairy tale apples, topped off with delicate little golden stems as sprays. I’ve been wearing Lolita Lempicka scents for so long, the quality and seductive, offbeat quirkiness has always remained the same. It’s a distinctive gauzy gourmand style, very much an Lolita Lempicka thing, playing off powders, sugars and salts against skewed floral and ominous Grimm woods. There is a lot of pointless flankering though and sometimes you can get lost amid the permutations of variously Midnight etc formulae.
Anne Flipo of IFF
My EIC Michelyn Camen asked me to review Sweet ages ago, but good grief, how damn hard was it to find in the UK? The answer… very. I had to buy it directly from the Lolita Lempicka site in Germany, a frou-frou portal for all things Lolita Lempicka . I did get a free apple charm bracelet made for a pixie’s wrist so that was okay then… Hahaha. Oh and a sheet of lip stickers. Just what a fox needs. To be fair I m not the target audience for Sweet, that would be a demographic of young twenty something glossy girls, tweens or fabulous 70’s drag queens. This time round, Lolita Lempicka have used talented French IFF perfumer Anne Flipo, who made the gorgeous Fleur de Narcisse (2006) and Iris Pallida (2007) for L’Artisan Parfumeur.
Sweet is actually quite a departure for Flipo, her style tends to be on the more elliptical floral side of things or as her work at L’Artisan over the years has demonstrated – she has an innate understanding of petal form and floral structure with some ethereal studies of hyacinth, violet, carnation, orange blossom and mimosa under her belt. There is no denying this is an enormous, enamelled glitterball of a gourmand. If you can imagine the evil queen offering Snow White a glassy, camped up strobe-lit apple as the snowy forest echoes to the cold addictive beats of Giorgio Moroder… you might begin to get an idea of how OTT this chocolate-dipped cherry scent is. I can’t get images of Studio 54 out of my head, Bianca on her white steed, Liza, Bryan, Halston, Pat Cleveland, Andy, Grace mingling and sweating out their drugs. Whirling painted busboys, the whiff of coked up doom and sex arcing through the smoky beats. The box has a massive set of pouting glossed up lips on it, little bit Roxy, little bit Laura Mars.
I’m sure many of you know by now I love a gourmand and this fairly explodes out of the glassy red apple with a huge sexy smile of candied, glacé cherries that smells like a mix of freshly opened Haribo Happy Cherries and old fashioned cherry-flavoured cough linctus. It’s a very odd rush indeed, bittersweet and harsh with a syrupy slide into the BIG heart of cocoa absolute. The chocolate is silky smooth, as real as Dolly Parton obviously, but the cherries have been choc dipped briefly and left to harden into delicious glistening red on dark temptation. There is a flicker of angelica, an anisic kiss just to try and counterpoint the overall sweetness, but it’s a losing battle to be honest.
Cherry Cough Linctus
Cashmeran is a very dominant presence in the drydown, chilly and vast, holding open and twisting the cherry/choco note into something rather rarefied and comforting. Iris is listed in the notes, but it’s hard to detect amid the luscious cherryade rampage. You are going to have to have to be a dedicated gourmand lover to wear Sweet. But it’s seriously fun to play in and very well made. I always enjoy Lolita Lempicka fragrances; they are witty and often inventive and this lacquered disco blast of sticky BOOM! is no exception. While Sweet is not breaking any new ground particularly, it shakes its fairy-tale booty with chic c’est freak allure.
Disclosure – From our own collections
The Silver Fox, Editor and Author of The Silver Fox
We have a 5 ml decant for one of our US or EU readers, (Michelyn is keeping the apple charm bracelet) please leave a comment with why you want to try Lolita Lempicka Sweet and your favorite Studio 54 denizen. Draw closes March 2, 2015
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