A gentle young princess with fondness for the decadent desserts, rare and exotic flowers and bewitching jewels of her sheltered life is abandoned by order of her cruel stepmother in an enchanted forest. There the princess finds herself enraptured by the forest’s flowers, losing herself ever farther into the woods as she fills her pockets with the wondrously perfumed flowers she picks – or so goes the Années folles era French fairy tale ‘Blondine’.
Full of decadent confections and alluring florals, it is hardly a wonder then that Blondine would go on to inspire a perfume. What is surprising though is that it wasn’t the likes of contemporary 1920s floral-famous Houbigant or Guerlinade-renowned Guerlain that crafted the perfume, but rather Frassaï, a budding Argentinian house in 2017.
Crafting a composition from the elements of the eponymous fairy tale, Frassaï’s Blondine is a seductive perfume that deftly treads the bounds of floral, gourmand and oriental genres to enchanting result. The work of one of my favourite perfumers, Yann Vasnier, Blondine’s notes list reads more like a pâtissier’s shopping list than an actual perfume – fruit, caramel, butter, cocoa – and yet, in spite of this, Blondine is never glacé sweet, nor frangipane dense. Rich in exotic green-tinged florals and dainty white lilies, Blondine isn’t overtly floral either. What Blondine is is a triptych composition of lilies, salted caramel, and suede leather that manages the feat of being simultaneously complex without weightiness.
Frassaï and I are in agreement on the notes list for Blondine:
mandarin, pear leaves, salted butter caramel, tiger lily, ashoka flower, cocoa, tonka bean, castoreum, white musk
Like its fairy tale inspiration, Blondine opens fair and pretty on the skin with an almost soliflore accord of virginal lilies in all their solar-saline crystalline splendour. Akin to burying one’s face into a bouquet of fresh cut lilies, here the flowers are waxy with green and spice nuance belying their distinct nose-tingling salicylates. These lilies are exceedingly pretty. In the background, mandarin lends momentary brightness while a barely perceptible duo of suede and creamed butter (an actual butter accord, not a figurative one) provide a velvety fullness to the opening.
Past the immediate opening, Blondine turns increasingly gourmand as the saline lilies and creamed butter meet hot caramel. The resultant accord is something like heavily salted butterscotch – sweet, salty lactonic and silky – without any burnt-sugar bitterness, nor caramel syrup sickliness. Blondine’s gourmand heart is very much gourmet, not at all like the overly sweet caramel accords so prevalent in celebrity and designer fragrances. It is also here while the lilies and salted butterscotch parley in dispute of which is the more prominent accord that the suede of the opening retreats into the depths of the composition, if only to prepare itself for the limelight coming its way.
Rounding out the composition’s structural triptych, Blondine’s base is a suede leather one. Gone entirely is the caramel, the lilies too except for a few remnant salicylates, replaced instead by duet of cocoa-dusted, couramin rich tonka and glove-soft suede, itself backboned by the green spiciness of Ashoka flower and muskiness of castoreum. Dark and musty, the base completes the fairy tale’s recital with the Princess Blondine now well and truly lost to the depths of the enchanted forest.
Blondine is a deftly crafted fragrance that masterfully traverses genres while managing to eschew settling into any single classification. It traces the decadent and enchanting plot of its fairy tale inspiration but does so without clichés. An infinitely wearable fragrance that accurately illustrates the narrative behind it, Blondine is a strange and luxurious thing in this modern era of perfumery.
Year of Release: 2017
Creative Direction: Natalia Outeda
Perfumer: Yann Vasnier
Alternatives: Frédéric Malle Lys Mediterranee, D.S. & Durga White Peacock Lily
Available: www.frassai.com for US$175, 50ml