Fragrance Review: Armani Prive La Femme Bleue “Armani’s Blue Period”

The Armani Prive line has been a maddeningly uneven group of fragrances when it is good it can be very good; Bois D’Encens. Unfortunately they often seem like a slightly different riff on another fragrance. Last year’s “Thousand and One Nights” collection is a good example of that. What is especially difficult is these fragrances come at a price point where high quality ingredients shouldn’t be all you get for your money.  Because of this track record my expectation when a new Armani Prive scent is in front of me is to expect something nice but not original.

Then the new Armani Prive La Femme Bleue landed in my mailbox. La Femme Bleue is a limited edition of 1,000 bottles meant to coincide with the Giorgio Armani  Spring/Summer 2011 collection of the same name. The entire collection was described by Giorgio Armani as:

Envisaging a journey through the desert, following a Tuareg caravan, the nomad people who have become the esthetical reference for my new couture collection. "Only when you are working with a color, you manipulate it, you learn about all its countless variations. Indigo, matte, charcoal, kohl power, dark, glossy…”

For the fragrance part of the collection Armani turned to Serge Majoullier and he described his creative process this way:

"It’s not easy to translate the idea of deep blue, I found the way by blending oriental and vanilla notes, perfect to evoke a hot starry night; so I added to black iris, which is dark blue in nature and whose scent at times verges on chocolate, a woody background. This way the fragrance is not just floral".

M Majoullier uses that black iris as the central note and surrounds it with rich gourmand notes of chocolate and vanilla all on a foundation of frankincense and woods. What I found particularly amusing is this scent didn’t bring the color blue to mind it felt like a rich dark mahogany brown to my nose.

The opening is the black iris mentioned by M Majoullier. At first sniff it smells a lot like a great orris and as I like that note very much it is very nice. As M Majoullier mentions it eventually starts to take on a chocolate character. More correctly on my skin it comes off like a fine dusty cocoa. The chocolate note arrives and takes that cocoa character deeper and in conjunction with the silvery iris it makes this phase of development alternating between intensely floral and then intensely gourmand. This combination works beautifully. The gourmand nature is enhanced with vanilla and then incense and a mixture of clean light woods finish La Femme Bleue off.

La Femme Bleue has average longevity and average sillage.

Despite the name La Femme Bleue is a distinctly shared fragrance. If you are a lover of iris fragrances and gourmand notes this will delight you no matter your gender. I am hoping La Femme Bleue will signal the beginning of a new type of creativity for the Armani Prive fragrances which rivals the creativity of the couture of which they share a name with.

Disclosure: This review was based on a sample purchased from The Perfumed Court.

Mark Behnke, Managing Editor

What is your favorite Armani Prive? Your own blue period?

Editor's Note:Blue Period (Periodo Azul) is a term used to define to the works produced by Pablo Picasso between 1901 and 1904, when he painted essentially monochromatic paintings in shades of blue and blue-green, only occasionally warmed by other colors. inspired by Spain but painted in Paris, are now some of his most popular works, although he had difficulty selling them at the time

 

Mark's reference to "riffs" is right on as Miles Davis had an album called Blue Period  a 10 inch vinyl in 1951.Miles played more jazz in Detroit than in any other city

 

 

 

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8 comments

  • This is one many of us perfumistas would like to test for sure. My favorite Armani Prive is Armani Prive Oranger Alhambra, there are some new ones i have my eye on……

  • My favorite Armani Prive is Eclat de Jasmin. My local Nordstrom stopped carrying this line – or I’d have founded a couple more to love and add to my collection.

    Thank you for the review and especially for the information about TPC: I wanted to try this perfume when I read first about its release but when I checked TPC didn’t have a sample.

  • My favorites Cuir amethyste &Pierre de lune
    Moonstone from the original six
    They were so expensive at the time as the cube flacons were made of a precious wood from Africa I remember reviewing a few for base notes and beauty news and I believe Armani won a FIFI for best packaging in 2006
    I definitely gravitated to the gem stone theme which was unusual for 2005 Then the line changed flacons and the newer entries became more affordable
    I certainly would like to sample as iris and gourmand notes sound more over the top than I would have expected from an Armani fragrance

  • Interesting review, which sparked the thought of how differently we all must perceive colors and their olfactory associations.

    It doesn’t sound like I’d go for La Femme Bleue.

    I’ve not tried all of the fragrances in the Armani Privé line, but I did buy a bottle of Cuir Amethyste. I’ll eventually get around to trying the Oud Royal and the Bois d’Encens, I think. I sampled Pierre de Lune, and it was just nice, not full-bottle worthy for me.

  • This perfumes sounds great, but according to the description, I imagine a dark brown color, rather than a dark blue 🙂

  • I see navy which is a color I adore. Armani, has always done the color Navy Blue in the best and someties most unexpected of ways. I hate to say that I can not recall liking a single Armani scent. My husband uses Code to this day I find it forgetable. I would like to see if the blue period has brought about some notes worth recalling:) thanks xo

  • I actually have a couple of samples of the line, but I did not get to them. Funny how it is, I am sitting in a cloud of Cuir de Russie and wondering whether I should try Cuir Amethyste since I’m not a huge leather fan! (huh?).

    My blue periods are light blue and scented by Oxford and Cambridge or Blenheim bouquet. I don’t own any perfume in a dark blue bottle and one of my latest disappointments was Midnight in Paris, so this is a new territory for me.

  • My absolute favourite is Bois D’Encense, so calm and serene. I would have loved to sniff La Femme Bleue, but the fact that I’m sure I would like it, and that there are only 1000 bottles has made me try not to order a sample. Thank you for the wonderful and highly enabling review.