Throw caution to the wind and leave your scruples at the door for this is Fracas – the indisputable queen of tuberose fragrances, imitated by everyone, loved and loathed in equal part.
“There are perfume legends, there are perfumer legends, and then there are perfumes that become obsessions. Fracas is all three,” […]
Chandler Burr
Conceived in 1948 for Robert Piguet by fabled perfumer Germaine Cellier – the first professional female perfumer, a proponent of synthetic materials, a towering beauty as pugnacious as they come and entirely uninhibited – Fracas was quick to cement its icon status, becoming a signature scent of the who’s who of celebrity: Eva Peron, Marilyn Monroe, Rita Hayworth, Brigitte Bardot, Kim Basinger, Linda Evangelist, Iman, Kate Beckinsale, Ivana Trump and, most famously, Madonna. High praise indeed for a fragrance whose entire composition is based on the conceptual rendering of a single white flower. Then again, tuberose is no mere flower.
The most carnal of the floral notes, tuberose smells at once creamy, heady and fleshy, sometimes with a mentholated nuance, and often of sweaty armpits or decay. It is a floral note of enormous contrast, and one that renders ardent affection or passionate detraction. Victorian society forbade unmarried woman from wearing tuberose for risk of inducing spontaneous orgasm, and in India, girls are still warned not to breathe its perfume after dusk on account of its aphrodisiac powers. Roja Dove was right in dubbing tuberose the “harlot of perfumery”. A commonplace material in modern perfumery, tuberose owes much to Cellier who threw caution and convention to the wind to create the first true tuberose perfume in Fracas.
By way of an official notes list, Robert Piguet offers us:
bergamot, mandarin, jasmine, tuberose, gardenia, musk, sandalwood
Fracas is so very much more than that! My own experience wearing its vintage and modern iterations would suggest a notes list closer to this:
bergamot, orange blossom, peach, methyl anthranilate, green notes, hyacinth, tuberose, jasmine, lily-of-the-valley, orris butter, violet leaf, white musk, sandalwood, vetiver, tolu balsam, oakmoss
A supposed soliflore, Fracas is a masterstroke of illusionism; its lifelike rendering of the tuberose flower is as much the result of an overdose of orange blossom absolute as it is Indian tuberose absolute. There are days I wear Fracas that I could swear orange blossom is the more prevalent note. Continuing this illusionism, jasmine and orris butter are drawn upon to render tuberose’s own indoles and velvety creaminess. This floral trickery makes for a tuberose accord that is hot, fleshy, sweet and buttery – just as the real thing is – but beautifully, if somewhat outlandishly, magnified. Fracas’ tuberose accord is an exercise in olfactory maximalism, but that seems the name of the game here.
A prelude to what is to come, Fracas opens with a bombastic dose of bergamot and that wonderfully indolic orange blossom, both notes sweetened by methyl anthranilate’s fizzy fruitiness and the velvety lactones of peach. Here, Fracas is luminous, delicate even – but not for long. Accompanied by orris and indolic jasmine, the tuberose soon emerges from the shadows with its buttery smooth carnal desire on full display. Gone now is any hint at delicacy; the orange blossom becomes one with the tuberose, and what little presence the bergamot still has in tandem with the emerging lily-of-the-valley, sweet violet leaf and green wateriness of hyacinth has the feel of a whore’s bath – a splash of freshness to disguise tuberose’s own indolic fleshiness. The butteriness of the tuberose accord becoming ever more prevalent as Fracas’ base of woody sandalwood and vetiver emerges, darkening with tolu balsam and oakmoss as it progresses.
A composition of tuberose and orange blossom in overdose concentrations, there is nothing coy or bashful about Fracas. She doesn’t hide her come-hither gazes, nor is she remorseful to the paramours she leaves in her wake – of which many a perfumer might be considered. Fracas is after all the gold standard of tuberose fragrances, the one to which all others strive; Madonna’s Truth or Dare, Serge Lutens Tubéreuse Criminelle, Guerlain Jardins de Bagatelle, Versace Blonde and Frédéric Malle Carnal Flower the standouts in a crowded field. In fact, Frédéric Malle said once in discussing his own said tuberose fragrance that “Every single person making a tuberose fragrance is trying to knock off the classic, which is Fracas,”.
I may have waxed lyrical here, but Fracas is worthy of such praise. Germaine Cellier with Pierre Negrin who revived it in 1996 and Aurélien Guichard who maintains the formula today, have captured tuberose in all its big, heady glory with Fracas. It is the benchmark for all white florals which followed.
Year of Release: 1948
Perfumer: Germaine Cellier, then Pierre Negrin and Aurélien Guichard
Alternatives: Madonna Truth or Dare, Serge Lutens Fleurs d’Oranger
Available: Harpers Emporium, Libertine Parfumerie and www.robertpiguetparfums.com from $249, 100ml