Iris Perle
Les Indémodables (2017)

This is the second Les Indemodables fragrance I’ve tried after Ambre Suprême, and it seems the brand leans toward more classical, straightforward compositions. This one, however, felt a bit too light for me to fully appreciate. It’s airy, clean, and completely inoffensive—no synthetic or harsh edges at all. Still, if I’m looking for an iris scent, I’d reach for Dama Koupa by Baruti instead. Here, I pick up more mimosa and other floral tones than iris. It might deserve another test, though, since it faded so quickly on my skin.

Iris Perle is a great name for this perfume. It has a very pearlescent quality to it: soft yet brilliantly white with almost imperceptible hues of cream and silver, perfectly symmetrically round, a metallic sheen to it in the right light, and elegant in a way not many can pull off. Carefully read that last description. Not many can, or will want, to pull off this perfume. That is mainly because they don’t like real orris. Makeup, baby wipes, lipstick, starchy and potato like, overtly powdery, soapy, etc. - and many other descriptors of a negative bent. Sorry, but that’s what real orris smells like. I, for one, adore it. Maybe I haven’t had the negative associations in my past that others have had with cosmetics featuring this accord. Were a lot of you forced to wear makeup, hit across your person with packages of baby wipes, had soap shoved in your mouths when you were foul, or forced to eat bland potatoes, as children? I don’t understand. Anyway….

The biggest thing to note with Iris Perle is that the orris absolute stretches from top to bottom, beginning to end, of the perfume. Other notes you might detect play around at different stages filling in some of the gaps and giving minute attention to details: Les Indemodables’ modus operandi, although a bit different with Iris Perle. The opening has sage and jasmine accords to it, which present the orris as almost throat-scratchingly dry and giving it a metallic sheen. The jasmine is completely indolic, its musky mothball quality in full force, while sage gives a green and herbaceous lean emphasizing the earthy and rooty (i.e. potatoey) nature of orris. Meanwhile, playing around in an aloof manner below the surface is something sweet: the sugary banana accord of ylang-ylang that makes itself more apparent after the jasmine and sage dispense. This seems to be where Iris Perle loses people, as this creamy and tropical sweetness plus the starchiness of orris comes across as what you’d find in a lot of cosmetics. I think it’s beautiful, and it puts pictures in my mind’s eye of the microscopically subtle swirls of cream and silver colors you can sometimes find in the pearl’s polished white facade. Finally, and rather quickly, mimosa makes an entrance and carries on the brief from the banana-pushing ylang-ylang. Yellow and honeyed floral, slightly woody, brimming with pollen, the mimosa combines with orris to make sure you know the orris came from the iris flower. It’s gentle, caressing, and beautiful, and it makes sure you understand there is a simple beauty but a timeless elegance to the iris flower. The last thing you’ll smell is a skin scent of that gorgeous orris absolute, completing the journey and taking you home. When Iris Perle at last takes me there, I cannot stop smelling my arms and wrists for one more hit of its heartbreaking beauty.

In terms of olfactory complexity, and how much detail Les Indemodables’ exquisite materials provide, there isn’t as much to say about Iris Perle compared to many of their other compositions. But, this is not a detraction or a negative, if anything it reinforces the message of simple beauty and elegance with no frills or unnecessary words said. It’s one of the few LI perfumes that provides space for the accords to move, breathe, and speak for themselves. Most LI perfumes are a single paragraph, extraordinarily well written they are, but Iris Perle includes a couple paragraph breaks to let some space and gaps exist between thoughts. If you love iris/orris, in its naturalistic and simplistic elegance and beauty, you will love Iris Perle. If not, you might find it mundane and cosmetic. I personally think it’s one of the best iris perfumes I’ve ever smelled, right up there with Apres L’Ondee, Iris Poudre, Dior Homme (the original release, mind you), and Iris Silver Mist. Stunning.

I've never been a big fam of jasmine, but the way this mixes with the ylang ylang is a treat for sure. More suited for the ladies, but this is a nice fragrance. 7/10

Username checks out. In its totality, Iris Perle is an opalescent soap bubble of freshly peeled mandarin over soapy-waxy-fatty mimosa clasped in a child’s slightly sweaty paw, but studied closely over a day, it breaks down into two distinct phases. The first is reminiscent of what I think of as the typically Italian take on iris, i.e., slightly bitter, powdery, and freshly-laundered, rather than floral. This is clearly built around a ‘grey’ workaday iris material (rather than orris root) dressed up with lots of mandarin peel and the sharp, vegetal greenness of violet leaf, which lends a subtle leather accent. It’s not a million miles off the Acqua di Parma or Prada Infusion d’Iris line DNA. But more expensive-smelling. So, like Satori Iris Homme.

The mimosa, shy creature that it is, is slow to unfurl, but eventually we get glimpses of that “is it a flower? Is it school glue? Is it a cucumber?” oddness that makes this flower so charming. It smells high-toned and bleachy, which gives it only a glancing similarity to the treatment of mimosa in Une Fleur de Cassie (Malle) (Une Fleur de Cassie possesses a grungy, garbagey tone that Iris Perle does not), and absolutely no connection at all to the throatier, almond gateau takes on mimosa like Farnesiana (Caron). In fact, as time goes on, it is the subtly aquatic cucumber aspects of mimosa that come to the fore, joining with the violet leaf to form a pale (wispy) melony leather accord that splits the difference between Diorella (Dior) and Le Parfum de Thérèse (Malle). Verdict: Nice, though not required reading if you have either Diorella or Le Parfum de Thérèse.

Iris Perle

Iris is one of my favorite notes in all of perfumery. It's a shape-shifter that is at times powdery and luxe, at times peachy-floral, and at other times earthy-woody. I love it in all its forms, I think. I love Guerlain's gaudy iris-chocolate bon-bon, Iris Ganache and its pillowy richness. I love how Iris 39 smells like the actual flower- peachy and exotic. I love the crisp rootiness of Iris Silver Mist, Infusion d'Iris, and Masque L'Attesa. And the way it cushions harsher ingredients in compositions like 31 Rue Cambon and Traversee du Bosphore.

But I don't think I love this one.

Having smelled the butter and the extract in the Iris Pass some years ago, I don't really smell it here. There are some notes that remind me of L'Heure Promise, which is a deft combination of carroty iris and invisible sandalwood. I especially smell the acrid woody note used by Cartier in that one. And I smell a rose note that I recollect from classics like Knowing and No. 19.

Eventually, after a wait, there is iris, a fluffy cloud of it. But why do I feel it's playing a supporting role? I do sense a bit of fruitiness in the heart that alludes to the flower in bloom, but it isn't the indolic, nearly raunchy peachiness of the irises I grow.

Overall a compelling, well-blended unisex fragrance, and if I hadn't come into it expecting an iris soliflore, I'd probably really enjoy it. But I'm confused by it, as if I had a sip of plain soda water when I'd been expecting Sprite.

EDIT: I guess you have to wait for the drydown to get the iris. Once all the other flowers have faded.