Reviews of Parfum Sacré (1990)
by Caron

I have a small partial bottle of the EDT and I agree totally with Purplebird7. This is so beautiful when it first goes on, but I can't really enjoy it as much when that black pepper note kicks in. At first I was thinking that the problem may have been something in the make up of the EDT and was about to purchase a a bottle of the EDP, however, after I read Purplebird7's review it made sense that it was a pepper note that I was having a problem with. I keep wanting to push it out of the way so I can enjoy the other notes. I can respect that the perfume's creator made a creative choice to add this note, and judging from all of the positive reviews, it works for a lot of people. It just doesn't work for me.

I had to edit this review becaue I am having bad experiences with the black pepper note in perfume. It seems to me that this particular ingredient "blooms" over time, and often overtakes other notes. When I first bought my Parfum Sacre, the lemon, mace, and vanilla were dominant. It was spicy-sweet, lemony, and delicious with vanilla. Several years later, hot, woody black pepper permeates this perfume into its heart, preventing me from enjoying it until the drydown, when it finally becomes sweeter. I had a similar experience with Bulgari Omnia: my first bottle was from Sephora and was beautiful, but my second bottle was an old one from a small store, and it was unwearable. I will avoid this note in the future, as it has ruined two of my favorite perfumes. I still want to give this one a positive rating based on how it used to smell, but I can't anymore.

As a centerpiece, Parfum Sacré makes the classical choice of rose, but this is no soliflore—a masterly, multi-faceted treatment that vacillates from a brassy, tacky 80s floriental complete with shoulderpads, to the lingering aroma of an exquisitely creamy soap, the ethereal luxury of the finest cashmere.

The opening is a relentless assault, lemon and pepper and aldehydes and jasmine and neroli, and its brashness is only further accentuated by the intensity of cloves and mace. The spice rolls naturally into a smoldering resinous myrrh, and cutting through the haze of smoke a queenly, blood-red bloom enters, and the cacophony subsides into a sudden hush. From this moment, Parfum Sacré takes on its most literal form—PER (through) + FUME (smoke) + SACRO (holy/accursed, a word that takes on antonymous meanings)—a dry, leathery, spiced rose not unlike potpourri. The incense acts as a crucial buffer between the top notes and the heart; by the time rose makes its presence known, the clamor has faded into an echo and left only a refined and elegant scent. As it moves into the drydown, Parfum Sacré makes yet another unexpected evolution, albeit a quieter one: the incense becomes merely atmospheric, and in a seeming reversal of time, the rose comes alive again, not quite the freshness of a garden, but petals strewn onto a downy bed of vanilla and musk (at which point it resembles Arpege). Compared to the stage lights of the opening, the drydown is just a subtle glow, the rosy fingers of dawn, lying very close to the skin.