Chantal Thomass
Chantal Thomass (2002)

The opening of Chantal Thomass is peculiar, a lot of cherries, cranberries and raspberries, and most of all, a striking tomato scent! This combination to my nose smells exactly like dried cherry tomato, yummy and very delightful.

After about 3 hours, the fragrance settles down into a powdery floral skin scent while sandalwood and a light touch of pathouli preventing it falling bland. This phase reminds me of Givenchy Dahlia Noir. Both are chiffon-like understated scents.

The sillage is moderate during the opening then it mellows down into a skin scent and it can reach to 7 hours for longevity in a hot summer day. I think it's a clever fragrance, with a memorising opening and a comforting drydown. I wouldn't recommend blind buying it as the opening is quite a particular scent but it certainly worths a try!

Sweeter even, I think, than Pink Sugar. This is a super sweet one… It's a fruity floral with a very berry strange opening featuring, among others, raspberry, cranberry, and tomato, in a not very refined accord. The florals of the middle are powdery and super sweet and the only floral I can identify is heliotrope. The base is warm, sweet, powdery: It's woody, ambery, and musky with a thorough layer of opoponax. Chantal Thomass might have been an okay fragrance, but, as it is, it's just too sweet.

Lots of sugary sweetness, concentrated blackcurrant juice and lashings of liquorice - sums up this Chantal Thomass fragrance. I did like it at first but I have always had a quirk when it comes to perfume of being attracted to a frag mainly because it is 'different' or 'unusual'. Have been trying for years to recognise that 'different' and 'unusual' do not immediately translate as 'beautiful perfume' in any language!!!! Sometimes, as in this case, I forget.

To me this smells exactly like Boone's Farm "Strawberry Hill" wine (a very cheap wine at $2.99 a bottle) which all the teenagers would share before they were employed and could afford Mad Dog 20/20. Way too foody & sticky sweet.

You must be a fan of exceedingly sugary scents in order to appreciate Chantal Thomass; I like sweet scents, vanilla scents, sweet powdery scents, fruit scents, you name it, but this is a little over the top even for me. At least that's the case in the initial application, which comes on like an tsunami of raspberry Kool-Aid and makes you honestly scratch your head in wonder as you ponder the connection between a childhood beverage and the very boudoir-esque, black lace-gartered bottle in which the actual fragrance is housed. There seems to be a very curious disconnect at this stage. Then, once the big, big berry !!blast!! simmers down, the fragrance moves into more identifiably coquettish territory with a combination of rose, powdery deep violet and almondy heliotrope. This stage is somewhat evocative of L'Artisan's Drole de Rose, excpet that instead of Drole's honey note, here you have - tomato? Yes, it's true, it's a discernible note in the Chantal Thomass composition, and incredibly bizarre as it may sound, when paired with very sweet ingredients (this is true in culinary preparations as well), tomato can take on a honeyed quality. Try a very sweet tomato jam if you ever get the chance and you'll see what I mean; tomato plus lots of sugar really has a honey-like aspect to it. Anyway...the Chantal is not as smooth or gentle as the Drole de Rose and has a harder edge to it, which is actually a bit of a plus if you're not thrilled with Drole's staying power. Chantal sticks around for quite a while, believe me. Basically, Chantal is Drole's big and slightly brassy sister, slugging down her Kool-Aid for all she's worth and going the distance, black garter and all!