Faconnable is today back to being a luxurious leisure brand from the French Riviera, known to connoisseurs and more locally in France.
For a while, though, it was a household name. The brand had its heyday in the 1980ies and 1990ies. Back then they expanded their business from France to the world and added accessories and perfumes to their line of men’s and woman’s clothing.
Actually, 1999 or 2000 must have been the peak in Faconnable’s ascent. Around that time the family owning the company since two generations sold the company. Under new management the brand first was promoted relentlessly and then -kind of- was forgotten. I don’t know how many times the owners changed.
Today Faconnable seems to be back to the roots with shops mainly in the South of France. But they don’t sell perfumes any more, at least I couldn’t find a link on the Faconnable homepage. No idea who owns the rights on the perfumes from the old times.
In the late 1990ies I must have seen the advertisements in Elle and Vogue of Faconnable for the scent “Pour Elle”.
The black and white add showed a woman in her twenties or thirties looking coolly at a point in the distance. She’s a free spirit, coming from the beach presumably at the French Riviera with some lover, and not trying to ingratiate herself with anybody.
The only slightly colourful part (light yellow) on the add is the bottle of “Pour Elle”.
I was hooked. I loved the spirit the scent transported and I wanted to have it. This was before the internet was able to bring everything home to everybody immediately. More important though: at that time, I was a poor student. I was free and I loved it, but money was really scarce.
When I visited a friend in Brussels, Belgium, back then I remember I found the Faconnable boutique in Avenue Louise (back then, today it moved to another street).
For sure I saw the perfume and the price tag in the window and I went in and either got it sprayed on or got a small tester. Not sure any more. No way was I able to buy a full bottle, whatever the price was. I remember loving the scent, but I had no clear memories of it years later.
Life goes on, humans forget. People or items one really craved at a time are not missed any longer, they are relegated to the back of the head.
One day I searched through Sobelia’s page looking randomly for scents and when scrolling down I saw Faconnable. And I thought a calm “oh” and remembered.
When I checked the Faconnable scents, I saw a rather unfamiliar bottle, but I bought it anyway. It was Faconnable “Femme”, from the year 2006.
Happily, I wore the pleasant fragrance to difficult business meetings, because I felt strong with it.
I knew it was not my lost scent of old and I searched some more. With perfume databanks you can find the years of launching and I even found the advertisement with the free-spirited lady. I had found “Pour Elle”. What a pleasure that gave. Like finding a long-lost friend again, of whom you had had an address, but not used it for years and one day you write to check and hear, yes, it’s me and I am close to moving house after 15 years, so lucky you found me in my last month here. Good feeling.
Buying “Pour Elle” was difficult, not because of the price any more, it was down to only around 50 Euro. The difficulty was finding one forgotten bottle on some shelf somewhere. Amazon UK came to my salvation and one day the cherished bottle arrived. Same elegant design, deeper yellow colour.
I was really, really excited to smell it for the first time in 20 years.
I tested it and was surprised.
It’s aquatic, herbaceous, fresh, mint induced, not sweet, unrepentant. Different from what I normally like in scents. Not so feminine, it is fresher, cooler. The add with the free spirited lady hat gotten it 100 percent right all those years ago.
I had found my long-lost scent, and I named it my unicorn scent.
Like in the last unicorn’s story, written by Peter S. Beagle, memory and wishful thinking change our reality and keep us from growing. The unicorn is not a sugary sweet princess’ dream, but a creature that cannot feel compassion and is quite ok with it.
A unicorn is always definitely different from what we expect, but searching for it is always worthwhile. Finding one is rarely heard of, but it happens.
I treasure “Pour Femme” for the memories of longing and waiting and finding.
As for the scent notes, the Parfumo community website says it is mint, watermelon, lemon, freesia, cedar, sandalwood, vetiver.
That comes quite close to it. It is certainly no sweet scent. Mint, watermelon, lemon I do smell.
Usually, I don’t like vetiver in perfumes at all, but here it is actually present and fits in nicely.
“Pour Elle” is an independent scent, fresh like the clear azure waters of the French Rivera, perfect for hot temperatures. It’s very French, modern and shall not be forgotten.
The colour of the scent is perfectly true to the colour I see in my head: yellow and a cool tourqoise.
As an add on, let’s shorty speak about “Femme”, the scent I found first. It’s actually sweeter, including passionfruit, mandarin orange, plum and heliotrope.
Without the history and all the dreams I had concentrated on the free spirited lady, if I’d smelled both scents today for the first time, “Femme”would be my favourite. It comes closer to what I normally like in scents. But who could leave all the memories beside?