![]() I immediately acquired my own bottle, I was a teen. One day, to my sheer delight, I smelled Rive Gauche & instantly knew it was the fragrance I had always loved but had been unable to identify until then. Please kindly reply as I'm unable to find this info ANYWHERE: what do you mean, Rive Gauche has been reformulated?! Is this true? How can this be? It was the quintessential French perfume! The true essence of Paris that I smelled countless times from elegant business women on the quais of the metro in Paris in the very early 80's. * Recently added Michel Hy after reading that Fragrantica lists him as the primary perfumer, and Now Smell This lists him as Polge's co-creator. An interesting movie - but 50 percent (if such a thing can be quantified) - of what it could be. It's like watching Hitchcock's Vertigo without the technicolor or Bernard Hermann's score. Truly gifted perfumers combine facets of notes in ways that bring out the best in perfume ingredients, and Rive Gauche, thanks to Jacques Polge, reminds us why rose is such an exemplary note in perfumery.ĭrama, contrast, dissonance, surprises, multidimensionality, temporality - this is what has been cut out of the reformulated Rive Gauche. The subtle fruit from the peach, the sparkle from the bergamot and aldehydes and the sheerness of lily of the valley - all of these notes lift the rose up on their shoulders, elevating it and helping it shine. And it is truly radiant, like a movie star in her prime on the red carpet when you know you'll never see her looking as beautiful as you saw her that night. Without this preamble, there also isn't the same shock at how beautiful the rose is once it arrives. Those notes create a strange kind of drama, like a drum roll, or the parting of dark velvet curtains on a stage, that the tinny and one-dimensional reformulation doesn't provide. ![]() The odd "tarry" beginning and resiny background of the vintage, as Luca Turin says in Perfumes: The Guide, are simply not there. I was so happy a few years ago to buy what I thought was the same Rive Gauche, but having since scored the vintage I'm reviewing now, I can say that there's no comparison between the reformulation and the Jacques Polge-Michel Hy* constructed original. I smelled Rive Gauche as a child and just loved it - hoping one day I could become the sophisticated and fun woman who could pull this off. Heart notes: Rose, jasmine, geranium, lily of the valley, orris, ylang-ylangīase notes: Vetiver, tonka, sandalwood, moss, musk, amber Top notes: Aldehydes, bergamot, leafy green, peach ![]() ![]() (And yes, I just read this perfume's aura.) There's a strange dissonance between the blue/silver of the bottle and the "color" one gets when the perfume is on your skin for me, the scent's aura is a sheer magenta or pink. (Rive Gauche creates that same feeling Gucci Rush does for me - that the night is young and I want to go out, have fun, and do some damage.) Like the metallic bottle with its contrast between cold silver and electric cobalt blue, Rive Gauche, the scent, projects a formal, classical elegance (aldehydic floral) underneath whose frozen veneer flows a heartbreakingly beautiful rose ready to melt the perfume's reserve, declare the work day over - and invite everyone out for cocktails and dancing. As cheesy as this 80s ad for Rive Gauche is, the perfume is indeed for an unpredictable woman, the kind who's capable of, oh, I don't know.matching her office phone to her perfume bottle! (You know those Left Bank Parisian types.)
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