Poême
Lancôme (1995)

The bottle looks like an 80's power suit, wide shoulders tapering down in sexless straight lines to a slim small waist. And the perfume smells the same, a bombastic fruity tuberose in a metal-aquatic corset. (Compare this with the sensual curvy bottle and aldehydic tuberose of Spectacular by Joan Collins - 1989).
Poême's syrupy tuberose and soft oriental - combined with a liquid and cool-metallic cassis - feels like an 80's blockbuster with a 90's makeover. Fragrantica describe this rather schizophrenic structure as 'bitter honey', quite a good description on paper. But with my miniature, which has no box, there is a metallic overtone. Possibly this note is helional, or possibly it's been caused by damage, which can be a problem with vintage samples - especially those without a box.

Whatever the reasoning behind Poême, making a lush tuberose floriental in 1995 was clearly a retro gesture, going against the grain of the clean, watery, sexless scents that were the fashion of the time.

It's to Jacques Cavallier Belletrud's credit that he dealt with the technical problem of pairing an aquatic with an oriental. If it was a sound thing to do artistically is another question all-together.

I wonder that Lancôme still sell such a ragbag of clichés, but then again, it's better than the last thing they did.

2*+

Poême opens with sweet white and yellow flowers accompanied by a sort of dirty earthiness. With the time, the dirty scent dissipates and what's left is a perfectly blended sweet flowers. I can sense some tuberose, some peach; otherwise I can't really pick these many notes within. The sillage is moderate on me and it lasts quite a long time.

If it's a poem, it certainly is not a melancholic one. It's sweet, bright, and speaks of the cheerfulness and joy of life. It's shining, just like the gorgeous golden bottle.

La Sargantaine portrait of Júlia Peraire by Ramon Casas 1907

Aaahhhhh! This is another one of my long-term favourites that I have been re-visiting. I've “broken up” with two of my old faves recently, which I was a bit sad about, so I was curious to see how this one would go. I still love it as much as I ever did. There is something about this one that just feels so warm and comforting. I get a lovely tang from the bergamot and mandarin, and I can pick out the black currant. Then the vanilla and amber and musk all start to drift up, with a hint of rose and cedar. It's beautifully balanced – what with all the fruit and the flowers, it could easily topple over into one of those sickly, annoying, cloying perfumes, but it doesn't. It's a gorgeous scent – I always feel relaxed and peaceful and comfortable whenever I wear this one. Sillage and longevity are great, and it also makes whatever you're wearing smell lovely too. I've got a scarf that I wore last week and I wore Poeme that day, and I can still smell it on the scarf and it smells fantastic – I kept burying my nose in the scarf just to hoover up the scent! This one is definitely staying in my perfume stable.

An irrational anthem...

This giantess of a perfume is quite a difficult case to me. I guess that it's as hard to understand as its most profound namesakes, cause I'm sure that Lancôme didn't have Humpty Dumpty on its mind when "Poême" was chosen as a name. I was struggling with it since it was launched 20 years ago, and it took me nearly half of them to finally decide that I love the way it burns my olfactory receptors with its datura and narcissus mayhem, as opposed to its mimosa and vanilla comfort. And maybe this is the reason why its bottle always reminded me of a blasting machine, which of course would make a totally inappropriate vessel to contain a poem written with liquid gold. Unless this poem was a revolutionary olfactory manifesto. Well, was it? I'm not sure yet. Maybe Poême was never really meant to be thoroughly understood. Or maybe I was never able to handle its truth.
Poetry is one of the most subjective forms of art humankind has ever created. Because it's just words, and this makes it just a fleeting whiff of air. Because you can't see, touch or hear it (unless someone is reading or reciting it to you, but this subtracts the personal connection). All other arts require one or more senses to be perceived, and they depend on senses to reveal their true form and meaning. Poetry requires just reading, and reading is not a sense. Yes, it also requires vision, but vision here is only the mean. It's the most private of all arts. But on the other hand, it's the only form of art that can quietly make you see, touch, hear and smell the things it deals with.
Yet this befuddling elixir feels more like an incantation than a poem. But what it actually summons still remains a mystery. It's like a shapeless pulsating mist, which every time you take a step closer to it attacks you with such vice that makes you wanna run away, but when you turn your back and take the first step offward, it engulfs you with the most alluring and promising fantasies.
Just like when you desire something with all your heart, but you're scared to death by what it'll take to have it.
And all its qualities, whether good or bad, have a certain escalation.
Like a poem which starts in a seemingly indifferent or incoherent way, making you think that it's not going to be anything more than yet another babble, and suddenly you find yourself sitting on the edge of your seat, enthralled beyond words, trying to understand what has happened and why you're crying.
I have a very old bottle of this beauty, coming from the late '90s, and it has a deep amber colour, not unlike red gold. Every time I remove its cap, its olfactory assault hits me with full force, to the point of rendering spraying uneccessary. And in the rare cases of finally deciding to spray some on me, 24 hours is the minimum period it grants me its magnificent contradictions. Like stealing a full day and night of my life.
I'm still wondering why such a successful and popular perfume does not have even a single flanker launched. And I have no answer to offer, except that some strange conjuncture may have decided that it will remain one of a kind till the end of time. I believe that it's the last truly great piece of high perfumery created by the once mighty Lancôme. And this makes it a landmark on the edge of "old world" perfumes. A last, yet perpetual reminder of a time when the most important asset in any perfume house was the lab and not the marketing department.

The opening is quite unique on my skin, with the mix of rose, poppy, freesia and other flowers, resulting in a voluptuous, rich and and dense aroma. The drydown adds a honey-vanilla note that fits in very nicely. Very good silage and projection, with a longevity of over four hours on my skin. Very classic and traditional with a subtle twist. Very nice.