Jaïpur
Boucheron (1994)

This is for a vintage 1997/1998 bottle:

My mother wore this for ages (I have her bottle now), so I'll always associate this particular type of gangbusters fruity/floral/oriental with a certain type of affluent, well-heeled mature woman.

The sweet top notes blend both the sharp and ripe (almost overripe) qualities of apricots and plums. These blend with similar qualities of its white flowers--think freesia and maybe hyacinth, which blend with iris, bitter carnation and fresh tea rose.

A fresh musk kicks in midway, before a nice bit of sandalwood edged with cedar. The drydown comes up pretty quickly on my bottle, but that may have something to do with its age.

I know from experience that the sillage is massive. This used to last forever, but I think my bottle is aging, so the top notes are blowing off faster than they once would have.

Still, considering this has almost everything in it but the kitchen sink, it remains in balance--quite a high-wire act from Sophia Grojsman. This is a fruity floral done with brains, and I feel lucky to own a bottle with her fingerprints still showing, as it were.

Despite the classic Boucheron Jaipur is a remarkably fruity-floral concoction it "remains" surprisingly light, dry and balanced. You would love a measured semi-oriental "main" combination of apricot, floral patterns (a rich lush floral bouquet), eliotrope and woodsy notes (whereof the "eliotrope/woods/apricot/iris" harmony arouses a more than vague reminiscence about the infamous Lancome Tresor) all in a perfectly appointed game of balance and measure. Peaches and plums support the standout apricot feel creating, side by side with flowers (violets and Iris in particular), a really voluptuous-exotic (plummy/berrish-like) but surprisingly measured (I would say restrained) accord. The surrounding aura is woody (mostly sandawood) and musky. I prefer the Jaipur Saphir's radiancy but this one is another piece of "jewellery type of" luxurious olfactory refinement. Highly refined bottle.

Why do scent houses show their lack of originality or even imagination by using the same basic name for a series of scents that have nothing at all to do with each other????

I love JAIPUR POUR HOMME, a dry and intense oriental spice, so I decided to try the original feminine JAIPUR. Night and day.

JAIPUR is a pleasant gourmand dry fruit scent - yes, I get the apricot and plums, perhaps some dried peach as well. Very nice, very subtle, pleasant, but not outstanding in any way. The male equivalent is a far better creation - but why hamper it with the same name. Call it something else, for goodness sake!!!!

It starts out smelling a little like Bvlgari Pour Femme. Then suddenly, it's Tresor with a very fruity note. Jaipur isn't bad but, I'm not jumping up and down for it either. Something is still missing from this fragrance for me to love it.

I am always fascinated by the range of responses elicited by the perfumes of the house of Boucheron, and JAIPUR is no exception to the rule. To my nose, this perfume opens with lots of sweet red roses, not unlike Annick Goutal QUEL AMOUR! As it develops, however, JAIPUR follows a very different trajectory from that fruity-floral composition.

Eventually, JAIPUR becomes a smooth, only slightly sweet, light oriental on my skin. To my nose, the famous fruit tart which so many find here is more like a buttery (benzoin) pie crust upon which a few finely ground baking spices have been sprinkled. By the drydown, the discernible rose note has completely disappeared, but it is never really replaced. The clearing out of the roses allows the buttery, lightly spiced pie crust to emerge, but the elusive fruits remain hidden from me.

I was surprised, actually, to learn that this perfume was the work of Sophia Grojsman, because it is quite a bit more subtle than most of her unmistakeable, iconic, tatoo-like creations, and nothing like any of the fruity perfumes from her oeuvre with which I am familiar. I would never, ever have thought to compare JAIPUR to TRESOR, for example.

JAIPUR refuses to unveil its hidden depths before me, so I'm left, in the end, with a polite, light oriental much closer to a skin scent than the sort of bold, declarative perfume which I have come to associate with its creator.

I have read that the notes are plum, apricot, peach, violet, rose, acacia, heliotrope, peony, iris, musk, amber, sandalwood. This smells very like Tresor, another one of my favorites by Sophia Grojsman. Lovely.