Jo's Scent Notes: Ombre Rose L'Original
Perfumes are time machines. Whoosh, and you’re catapulted through space, back to places you’ve been or people you’ve loved. That’s such a key reason why I love scents. Often, it’s completely unexpected. Takes you by surprise, catches you off-guard.
And so it was when I recently re-smelled Ombre Rose, from Jean Charles Brousseau – as it happens, in the presence of his charming son and heir, Benoît, who was in London to help fuel the revival of one of the 1980s most beautiful scents.
I’d completely forgotten until I smelled it that sometimes, my mother wore this. (Along with Chanel No5, Chloé – the sumptuous original – Madame Rochas and Femme. Clearly, there is a ‘wardrobe of fragrances gene’, and I definitely inherited it.) And so of course, I’d borrow it. Spraying it again 40 years later, I am reminded that it is, quite simply, the definition of a beautiful, petal-soft, powdery rose fragrance.
Ombre Rose has a wonderful back-story, which adds to the romance of any fragrance, of course. Brosseau happened to be a Parisian hat and accessories designer (he founded his couture house in 1955). This was his second perfume; the first was a unisex scent, by the name BrossEau (nice pun, Jean-Charles!), after which he was encouraged to create something especially for women. He looked to the best: perfumers Françoise Caron and Pierre Bourdon. It was a wow. (And I’m not surprised.) Launched at Bergdorf Goodman in 1981, it became an immediate bestseller.
There is something of a revival of 80s scents going on right now, but this is anything but a shoulder-padded ‘room rocker’, the antithesis of Poison or Opium. Ombre Rose L’Original has a quiet beauty, the same vibe as a vintage powder compact. It’s soft, fuzzy, like the skin of a peach, opening to a honeyed sweetness and drifting towards flowers – iris, rose, lily of the valley. The base is a swirl of musks, sandalwood, heliotrope and a smidge of vanilla – altogether super-feminine. It sits on the skin like a halo of prettiness. And it has stood the test of time astonishingly well: it doesn’t smell at all old-fashioned or fusty.
I feel like I need a dressing table, on which to show off Ombre Rose, to sit at and give my hair 100 strokes a night from a silver-backed hairbrush, as I sit in a peach-coloured negligée, its colour echoing the Ombre Rose juice. This is fantasy is alas destined never to be fulfilled; there’s no room in our bedroom for another piece of furniture, and I’m not the negligée-wafting type, fundamentally. But for a little moment, I can imagine myself as that woman, when I wear this.
Oh, and about that bottle. It’s cited as a key reason why a relatively unknown designer was able to create such a blockbuster. Unique, hexagonal in shape, with a frosted-and-polished, Lalique-style finish to the carved camellias, it feels an Art Deco treasure you might have found while mooching around the puces at Clignancourt, and it perfectly chimes with the nostalgic, powdery and cocooning scent inside. (Note: this is called L’Original, because there are other spins on this – but I prefer this.)
I don’t often recommend giving fragrance as a gift, but I do think this would work fairly universally. In the unlikely event that the recipient doesn’t love the juice itself, the Ombre Rose bottle will delight. I remember it giving me a little frisson of pleasure, when I ‘borrowed’ it from my mother’s dressing table (she did have one of those).
A time machine, yes – but timeless…
£115 for 100ml eau de toilette – buy here
