En Passant by Frederic Malle

The first time I heard about "niche perfumes", my friend told me that the difference between institutional perfumes and niche ones is the fact that while the first category spends about 80% of the perfume launching budget on marketing and PR and only about 20% on the actual juice itself, it is the absolute opposite in case of a niche perfume brand.

Last week, I have been working on the recreation of Frederic Malle's En Passant by perfumer Olivia Giacobetti. I smelled this perfume one year ago in a small niche perfume shop, in Montpellier when with friends from school, we visited the beautiful region of Camargue.

When trying this scent, like usual, emotions hit me first, I instantly think of my Mum, than I realized that the perfume is a soliflore - lilac creation.
Where I come from, we offer traditionally lilacs for Mother's day, therefore I associated to her directly. I smelled the full Frederic Malle collection, and this perfume along with L'eau d'Hiver marked me the most. So I was really happy when my Senior Perfumer offered me as a practice to work with him on this perfume.

I read other reviews about the fragrance, and due to the fact that the olfactory pyramid is published, lot of perfume fan describes this perfume to smell like cucumber and bread in the dry down, since the official notes are watery notes, lilac, orange blossom, cucumber and wheat.
Happily, I wasn't biased by the official description of the perfume, so I more think of living lilacs on the tree, caressed by cooling wind and fed by morning dew.

Being a soliflore, the recreation was not so difficult, the juice equals to a beautiful central lilac accord surrounded with watery-airy notes, supported with powdery sweet notes in the base. I will of course not reveal all the secret of this perfume, but I decided to share - even if not precisely - one shocking detail about it: It's price.

En Passant n'est pas chère!

I mean, the fact that Olivia Giacobetti made something great which cots not much just proves to me how great she is doing her job, I was just expecting something more expensive, rich from this collection. And while we all know that Parisienne of YSL cost 48 EUR because Kate Moss is still drunk from her night before orgasm in a bed full of purple roses, I wonder what justifies 95 EUR for 50 ml of En Passant?

I think we can agree, that we pay a higher price for the free flow of the creativity of the creator and for the luxury of having a unique scent.