Puckrik On Perfume

Katie Puckrik: Photographer Martin Shaw

Lolita Lempicka Fleur de Corail
By Katie Puckrik

The other day I was dum-de-dumming around the mall, doing my mildly psychotic Sephora ritual where I absent-mindedly cover my face and arms with little scribbles of make-up and squirts of perfume. (The scene in David Lynch’s freaky “Wild At Heart” where Diane Ladd colours in her entire face with red lipstick comes to mind.) By the time I was a patchwork quilt of pretty smells, there was really no distinguishing what I had carelessly spritzed on various nooks and crannies. Except…drifting over the sweet sludge was one accord entirely unexpected in Sephora: incense.

Incense? I love incense! And there seems to be some unspoken taboo against it in mainstream perfume. But this was definitely incense – a mild, bittersweet Nag Champa, to be exact. I was forced to retrace my nose’s steps, past the eye-watering harshness of Caroline Herrera 212, the disconcertingly manly Chanel Coco Mademoiselle, the delightfully loopy Jean Paul Gaultier Ma Dame – until I found the source. It turned out that my incense was Lolita Lempicka Fleur de Corail.

Lolita Lempicka Fleur de Corail

Created by Maurice Roucel, this eau de parfum is a kicky little number. There’s some sort of citrus fizz at the beginning, and then it pulls the old switcheroo and starts hunkering down into spicy woods and a salty hint of tropical flowers. It’s a hot, thick smell, but not the kind you need to wait for winter to wear. In fact, winter would be all wrong, because Fleur de Corail conjures up a humid night on a summer beach – the driftwood bonfire making the perspiration shine on your skin.

A suspicion of vanilla floats through – did someone drop their toasted marshmallow in the bonfire? And then, thar she blows: Nag Champa, doing its smoky herbal stuff. Its dryness cuts the sweetness of the rest of the composition, toughens it up a bit. At the tail end of the scent, there’s a resemblance to Bulgari Black, with its hot vanilla-rubber vibe. Fleur de Corail references nature without smelling at all natural. And that’s part of its allure.

When not sniffing up a storm, Katie Puckrik is a TV presenter, journalist and performer, as well as the author of a memoir, Shooting From the Lip.

Click here to visit Katie’s blog for more perfume rants and rambles.