Doing a bit of recherche on perfumes one owns usually brings up some unexpected truths. “Le Parfum” by Aubade came to my collection some time ago in a phase of “let me try to buy all sweet almond perfumes” and not much thought about afterwards. The scent is very straightforward and I liked a few others with a different edge a bit more. Some years ago, there were few truly sweet perfumes around, not like today in the age of gourmand scents, where one can smell new ones every month (which is a great improvement). “Le Parfum” by Aubade was a reasonably well known almond scent as long as I can think and just needed to become part of my collection.
The Fragrance is made of sugary scent notes with lots of almonds and a few spices, mainly clove, anis, and vanilla. It is a dry scent, probably the right word is powdery. It smells like a sweet treat that you can only eat with something to drink close by. An almond cake a few days old might come close. The perfume certainly smells not juicy, or fresh, or lush. There is not much development in the scent, the almond-sugar-clove overdose stays true to its origins.
The perfume has a normal durability and strength of most pure dry almond scents – that means compared to other scent notes both are not high. It might lie in the nature of almonds to offer only a passing pleasure. When buying ground almonds for cooking, they have a fine and subtle scent that much reminds on the sweet and soft smell of almond blossoms one can sometimes smell in Southern countries during spring time.
The colours of the scent are white and beige.
“Le Parfum” by Aubade seemed to come from an established beauty brand which in my mind I adjusted to the 1970s without questioning it. The flacon did its bit to underline the assumption. I thought the perfume had been around for many years and that Aubade had a wider beauty line with other products.
So there came a few surprises when doing recherche on the perfume.
“Le Parfum” was only created in 2013.
It is no longer available today.
The brand Aubade has been, and still is, famous for luxury dessous. It was founded in 1958 in Paris.
The name Aubade comes from the French word of sunrise.
There is only 1 other perfume by the brand Aubade. It is named “Anecdote”.
Both perfumes were created by Delfine Jelk; today of Guerlain fame.
The formerly French company Aubade is owned by the Swiss company Calida since 2005.
Unfortunately, due to “Le Parfum” not being found on the Aubade website any more, the scent notes listed on the parfumo or FRAGRANTICA platforms cannot be checked. They both mention a lot of flowers: heliotrope, freesia, peony, lily of the valley, rose, and violet. Both also mention musk, vanilla, and cedar wood. No one mentions sugar, which seems very much present for me, whilst the other notes are not.
The venture to the perfume world cannot have been a real success for Aubade. Either that or a change of company policy led to the discontinuation of both fragrances. The 2 perfumes seem well liked by consumers. They have high ratings on the parfumo and the FRAGRANTICA platforms. Interestingly, the perfumes were only launched when the company was already Swiss – contradicting my impression of perfumes from 1970’s Paris.
It is a pity “Le Parfum” is no longer produced. The fine, subtle scent of almonds and dry almond cake gives easy pleasure. Compared to other almond dominated scents like Profumum Roma’s “Confetto” (produced since 1996) and Simone Andreoli’s “Mandorla del Sud” (produced since 2019), “Le Parfum” is drier and purer. This does not mean better – as usual all of us have different preferences.
It would be great if the formula of the “Le Parfum” by Aubade is sooner or later rediscovered and brought back to the us in the North, where no almond trees blossom in the spring. An easy and carefree light-heartedness in a perfume is never wrong.