Having chosen a career path that sees me moving country every four years or so, it is no longer feasible for me to own a large collection of fragrances. So, in advance of my next move, I’m on a mission to evaluate the perfumes in my collection to understand if they are essential or if I can let them go. I guess I’m finally getting around to fulfilling the premise of the ‘take one thing off’ in the blog’s name. Next up is Fêtes Persanes.
The gentle pudding spices of pink pepper and cinnamon in Fêtes Persanes are doing a lot of heavy lifting in the opening, which I appreciate because if not for them, it might be some aggressive woody-amber cantilevered in to provide all that upward motion. The texture is impossibly lovely – a sort of creamy vanilla Coke crossed with the powdery fizz of an old-fashioned rose sherbet.
It is one of the few ‘oriental’ compositions where Cécile Zarokian doesn’t overplay her hand, pumping up the volume on the vanilla-resin base she always starts from until it reaches a pitchy, porridge-toned one-note howl into your ear. Like Epic Woman, maybe her work on Fêtes Persanes isn’t evidence of a decision towards subtlety and softness but just a brief that happens to predate her love affair with – or access to – all the latest noisy toys in the German and Swiss flavour company drawers.
On that note, Fêtes Persanes isn’t so substantially different from her other perfumes, and may even be, I suspect, a subset of something more ornately orientalised, like Ani (Nishane), Epic Woman (Amouage), or Kashnoir (Laboratorio Olfattivo). With its almost citrusy pink pepper fizz and warm, dusty cinnamon over a fuzzy amber, it may even continue where Crimson Rocks winds down.
Resins can sometimes feel rough, spiky, or so smoky-dry that they catch at your throat, while some spices, especially cinnamon, can tip over into the medicinal. But not here – Fêtes Persanes is like a meringue that melts like snow on a tongue, leaving only a soft trail of creamy pudding spice, a hint of booze, and the gentle fizz on the top of a glass of freshly poured Coke. Though the perfume takes its name from an opera, I can’t imagine that it doesn’t draw on Persian sharbat culture, even if partially, for inspiration.
I mean, it’s not about to set the world alight, this perfume. And it’s no powerhouse. But it hangs around my skin like a powdered golden veil in the same way that perfumes like Ambre 114 (Histoires de Parfums), Safran Troublant (L’Artisan Parfumeur), and Violet Ida (Miller Harris) do, and that is my favourite kind of perfumed soundtrack with which to move through the world.
Verdict: I could never get rid of this, though I might not have the means with which to purchase another bottle once my partial is gone.
Cover Image: Photo by Abolfazl eslami on Unsplash
