Encre Noire pour Elle
Lalique (2009)

It isn't one I would seek out for a full bottle but, it is wearable. Mild rose. Amber, musk, vetiver, and cedar notes create a urine-like accord on my skin. Which, I don't mind, by the way. That lasts, a few minutes. Then Encre Noir falls flat and drifts away.

Has a soft, nearly powdery base. I have many others that fulfill the need for powdery bases. I would not wear this one often if I owned a FB.

Not unpleasant, but certainly nothing new. Think along the lines of Grès' Cabotine, which it shares more than a few notes with, but doesn't better (in fact, quite the opposite.) It's the sort of smell you've come to expect from hairspray and even has the same shrill alcoholic opening.

I can't help but feel this was a real wasted opportunity. Had they tried to create something, at least, as equally interesting as the Pour Homme, they could have had another winner. As it stands, this is a lame horse that should be put out of it's misery.

Roses and white flowers with so much lily and aquatic chemicals that it ends up smelling sort of freesia-ish. The whole thing is drowning in soap and laundry musks, to the point that it almost smells like an extremely perfumed fabric softener.

All in all, it's not bad, but I don't really care for aquatic florals or fabric softener perfumes, so a combination of the two genres is pretty unsatisfying for me.

I'm resisting the urge to give a thumbs down simply because it has nothing to do with the original Encre Noire (a perfume that played up EN's hidden rose facets would have been brilliant), but I'm trying to judge it on its own merits. That being said, Lalique as a house tends to make its feminine perfumes with almost classic-smelling topnotes unfortunately paired with pedestrian ingredients and cheap bases - Encre Noire Pour Elle is a perfect example of this. The flowers smell almost classy, but the aquatic and laundry elements end up making it smell a bit cheap.

Genre: Floral

If the name has you anticipating a more “feminine,” perhaps floral, variation on the delectably bitter, smoky vetiver of Encre Noire, I have to burst your bubble. This is nothing of the sort. Too bad – it would have a made a great fragrance.

What you get instead is an extremely dull, conventional soapy white floral fragrance; a kind if impoverished Ivoire with anything that might smell natural expunged. Chemical lilac top notes introduce a hyacinth and muguet reconstruction that could better serve as air-freshener than perfume. The drydown is a cheap-smelling soapy rose of so little interest or distinction that I can't imagine an iota of thought (or money) went into its composition. It's a shame Lalique chose to waste the cachet of “Encre Noire” on this junk. Daring women should wear the original instead.

After I read the pyramid I though this could become my signature scent. It contains all the notes I love. At the first sniff it seemed nice, and interesting. A floral with class and a hint of mystery. But after a while it turns to be a simple deodorant scent. And longevity was a disappointment. A pity, because I normally love lalique.

Full floral opening… the bergamot / freesia combination is very present… It is a dynamic, lasting floral accord dominated by freesia, it's possible that there is some ambrette in the mixture, but I smell mostly freesia.

The florals from the heart notes – especially the osmanthus – continue the floral energy of the opening. I do appreciate the very good osmanthus note in the accord; I can't separate out the rose note – I wouldn't bet the farm that it's there. This heart accord serves as my introduction to a new note for me: kaphalis, which has been variously described as a neutral wood note or a “complex synthetics with some subtleties to it and some musk-like characteristics” and that “it has quite a lot in common with Iso E Super.” I do notice a bit of neutrality and a slight musky platform in the floral heart accord as opposed to the straight-out floral accord of the opening, and at my first couple of testings I thought I was smelling a weak sandalwood note in the heart accord. I simply do not have enough experience with this note to feel capable of identifying it here. The florals of the heart accord last longer than I expected, but the quality of the accord does degrade as it ages and the tenor of the florals change from smelling floral to smelling generically soapy- green to smelling metallic. As far as what I don't smell of the listed pyramid, the list is rather long: I already noted that I don't smell the ambrette and the rose… they are probably there underneath the feesia and osmanthus, but I can't pick them out of the mixture. I pretty much miss out on the complete base – vetiver, musk, and cedar. I do get a musky platform through most of the fragrance and it certainly contributes to the overall vibration, but it is not obvious. The vetiver and cedar might be responsible for the weak metallic imprint of the last half of the fragrance, but I can't pull either one out individual as individual notes. Most of all, I don't get ink. The ink note in Encre Noire Pour Homme was quite obvious to me, but in Encre Noire Pour Elle, I don't get a trace of it.

With these full floral accords, I wonder about the reason for paring this scent with the successful Encre Noire Pour Homme… I expected Pour Elle to be somewhat related to the original – at least the ink note of the original might have been somewhat strongly presented in Pour Elle… Well… I don't want to get further into discussing the name of Encre Noire Pour Elle, suffice it to say that I see this is merely an unrelated product extension of a successful fragrance. It carries little similarity to Pour Homme and more's the pity.