Fleur Burlesque by Vilhelm Parfumerie
- Scentaweek
- Jul 17, 2022
- 3 min read
I wore 'Fleur Burlesque' by Vilhelm Parfumerie every day for a week so you don't have to, and here are my thoughts about it...
The Results in short
Source: Liberty London, 20ml spray
How much I like it: 9
Composition rating: 8.5
Lasting power: 8.5
Did my view change as the week went on? No, I continued to enjoy it
Did I get bored of it? No
Any Compliments? Yes, from a work colleague! She knows perfume too, so this is a 'score'
In three words: Voluptuous, bright, heady
Cost and value for money: expensive but worth it
Will I buy it? Bought for this review
Husband's notes: 'It's a nice perfume' and 'it's a flower garden smell'
Notes from Vilhelm Parfumerie:
Top notes: Gardenia, Jasmine
Heart notes: Sandalwood
Base notes: Amber
Here is a white floral that just simply delivers. It opens with a blast of indolic white flowers, warmed with voluptuous waxen petals and green stems that combine to give a fruit illusion: an unripe mango, perhaps, or sour peach. Its bracing opening can be a slight shock to the system: you sit up and take notice. In that way, it's a fortifying fragrance, like a sip of strong coffee. I can see a burlesque performer spraying this to get into role before the velvet curtains part and she struts onto the boards in her stiletto heels, feathers fanning the scent to reach the noses of those in the front row.
Jérôme Epinette, fragrance trail-blazer and seemingly the most prolific parfumer who ever lived, has achieved something fabulous here in my opinion: it's part 90s floral (think Chloe Narcisse, 1992), part vintage boudoir vibes and part modern, green chypre. Not sure what fuelled the marketing decision not to share a longer set of notes: it means as sniffers we're somewhat guessing on the cocktail that comes together to make this gorgeous scent.
Other fragrances Fleur Burlesque brings to mind for me are Narciso Rodriguez edt (in the opening spray) and Vivienne Westwood's Boudoir (on second sniff - do you ever do this? Smell twice in the same place, and on the second sniff in, different notes are made apparent. Somehow in my second inhale in a row I pick up a ghost of Boudoir, as bizarre as that sounds). On the Boudoir front, I think it's the 'naughty', corporal notes that are similar: maybe how sandalwood and amber play with the heady jasmine and narcissus? But saying that, unlike Boudoir there's nothing powdery about this fragrance. It dries down to be a soft, citrussy floral with both stemmy and milky aspects.
The Week's Review
As you can infer from the descriptions above, Fleur Burlesque is quite intoxicating. It's odd, then, that it also feels so fitting for any number of environments.
At work, wearing this I smelled pretty, lightly tropical and clean. Not at all like I was about to bust out my corset and suspenders.
In summer, it feels like an intelligently selected floral, fitting to the climate whilst being interesting and not at all showy or brash.
On a date, it feels like a sexy, come-hither statement fragrance; and at the theatre or a burlesque show, it feels like it encapsulates the glamour of performance art and of what is shown and not shown. With a little imagination it can transport you back to Paris's belle époque, to Toulouse Lautrec at the easel in a Montmartre apartment after a show: the makeup, the fishnets, the ruffled kick-skirts and the cigarettes. Sometimes I do catch a tobacco note, not unlike Jasmin et Cigarette by Etat Libre d'Orange, but of course nowhere near as pronounced.
Even though the list of notes is short (I don't believe them for a minute) the wearing experience of Fleur Burlesque is complex as well as easy. Even towards the end of applying this daily, I wasn't the least bit tired of it.
The whole purpose of my 7 day wear tests is to really spend time with a fragrance to begin to properly understand its facets and see if it's something I want to keep around a long while. I can see this being someone's signature fragrance, no problem.
For me, it's absolutely rocketed to 'essential' status, and I'm looking forward to wearing it more. What a stunner.
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