La Perla
La Perla (1987)

La Perla is another one of those 80's Big Hair and Shouldered Honeyed Chypre Feminines that stir my Libido.
I like women to wear them and if the Patchouli has enough oomph like them on my Boy skin as well.
It starts with a Sweet Freesia breeze mildly sharpened by a touch of Camphorous Carnation.
A good dose of Oakmoss supports the Bouquet of Rose and Jasmine to give the tickle to the Brain Cells. Honey projects it's Animalic and deep Sweetness coaxing one to nuzzle the Earlobe.
Base it with a Benzoined Sandalwood and plonk of Dirty Patchouli and Your Wish is My Command.
Lovely Experience.
From an Eau de Parfum sample.

The high 80's was an especially great period in the history of perfume, and no genre represents the decade better than the Fluorescent Rose Chypre.
Like this, many of them are excellent until the drydown, which can get a bit thick and airless.
Still very good though.

This fragrance is seamlessly blended. A sophisticated perfume which conjures up images of a darkly beautiful Italian woman in black stockings and a satin basque. It's lofty elegance makes me think of fine dark chocolate. For me, this is an occasional indulgence but worth the wait.

I might be the odd woman out here, but I have both the original and reformulated versions of the edp, and love them both.

For some reason, I get the image of a scarlet maple in full autumn splendor for the vintage: lush, rich and luminous. The reformulation is that same maple fast-forwarded to winter, where minus the leaves, you can see the intricacy of the jagged branches reaching into the dove-gray sky. Both have a place in my wardrobe.

As Emmapeel0099 says in her review, this fragrance seems to have been reformulated recently. The bottle is different now, too - it is low and elongated, not exactly difficult to spray, but not as comfortable in the hand as the older tall bottle.

La Perla is now a very pleasant, inoffensive floral chypre-lite: tame, polite and powdery. I have a difficulty making out the notes. Many people liken it to Paloma Picasso's signature fragrance, but to me the latter is sharper and edgier, though still beautifully blended. La Perla is pretty, but nothing about its current iteration stands out to me (unlike the EDT from a few years ago, which was clearly recognizable as a rose chypre with the necessary tang of oakmoss - this has been replaced by tree moss in the current version).

This was one of my favs and I wore it for years. Very smooth and sophisticated. It seems they have recently changed the formula. Currently it smells like bug spray on me.