Nigella Lawson dipped in salt caramel sauce

I love Shay & Blue. It’s no big secret. I’ve followed them loyally since the very beginning and have all their fragrances (except the Sicilian Limes… just not a huge lime fan… but it’s a bracing salt-washed lime for those that do…) piled high in my study in their beautiful Regency blue boxes. My first piece for Çafleurebon was on their gorgeous Salt Caramel, inspired by Charbonnel et Walker’s cult Sea Salt Caramel Truffles.

Perfumer Julie Massé  and  Creative Director Dom de Vetta

Since the brand was founded in 2012, Creative Director Dom de Vetta (A CaFleureBon Best Creative Director of 2014) and House perfumer Julie Massé have launched a series of quietly innovative and accessible perfumes that riff on a variety of styles in ways that seem the most perfect combination of familiar and intriguing difference. There is a usually something just a little leftfield in the mix, a twist on a favourite idea: dulce de leche over rose in Amber Rose, burnt woods drifting over marmalade haze in Blood Oranges, beeswax and cognac spilled on dark wood in Blacks Club Leather and the weird drowned mimosa and nut tones of Almond and Cucumber.

Shay and Blue Watermelons

Watermelons launched earlier this year and I described  it as ‘….rubicund, dripping and lashed to green mandarin, Julie Massé’s watermelon (note) is freshly cut and glossy with Jolly rancher charm.’ I finished my bottle very quickly, it was a delight to wear, a fruity wet throw of a  scent with oodles of easy charm and smiling pink joy. The combination of thirst-quenching melon, green notes, musk and vetiver made for a highly addictive cocktail romp, perfect for someone like me who struggles with citrus notes but sometimes craves a fresh clean scent with oddity.

Crushed Berries (MC)

Next from Dom and Julie at Shay & Blue is a fruit-themed composition, this time built around a dark shattered raspberry effect. It’s another one of their highly addictive essays in familiarity and surprise. It is something I love about the fragrances at Shay & Blue; these echoes and hints of otherness… familiar scented tropes but always with an added extra, a gift of the offbeat to beguile us. My first Shay & Blue fragrances were Almond & Cucumber and Atropa Belladonna. I still adore the lacteous wash of amandine mimosa, it is a fragrance I can drown in and Atropa Belladonna has an uncomfortable collision of narcissus and cassis that I relish at night.

Fairy Tale Wedding Gown (TSF)

Framboise Noire sparkles intensely on skin. It is gathered and divine with a sweep of fairy-tale harvest. I imagine a shadowed forest wedding buried deep in flickered, firelit-trees. The spectacle may be real or imagined but the gowns are berry red, stained with treefall. The official ingredients list an imagined black raspberry accord, red berries, iris pallida, white oud, musks and woods. Julie Massé oozes fresh talent as a perfumer and her dexterity at Shay & Blue has demonstrated a willingness to play with form, genre and simplicity, balancing these with wit and charm.

Berry Stained Hands -TSF

Framboise Noire is no different; the synthetic musks initially buzz and swoop at the senses as the sloe-coloured raspberry effect effervesces across the skin. Red berries is a pretty generic term, we can interpret this in our own ways. There is a distinct spiced cranberry tone amid the draping of darkening raspberry, the smell of it tart with a twisted, aloof sweetness.

There is a also a hint of grenadine syrup, the proper French stuff, thick and viscous, bought in tall metal tins, diluted with icy Perrier. All of these glimpses of berry-ness float in and out of my perception of this intriguing scent. The addition of iris pallida is seemingly redundant until the later stages of the drydown when the more smeared, jammier notes have died away, replaced by a controlled low volume effect of dirtied powder. It is deeply satisfying to wear with a frosted burgundy fade out. I like the fact you can be generous with the application, it doesn’t seem overtly strong at first and yet it has quite an entrenched presence as it settles in for its berried run. Framboise Noire is another pitch perfect addition to the Shay & Blue collection, the noire less night, more ripe and bruised harvest, shot through with musky sparkle and just enough glassy oud to suggest a kernel of darkness.

The Silver Fox, Editor and Editor of The Silver Fox

Disclosure – Bottle of Framboise Noire kindly supplied by Shay & Blue, opinions my own.

Shay and Blue Framboise Noire

Thanks to Dom de Vetta of Shay and Blue we have a 100 ml Natural Spray of Framboise Noire for a registered reader in The EU, USA and Canada. To be eligible, please leave a comment with what appeals to you about TSF’s review, where you live and if you have a favorite Shay and Blue fragrance. (In the USA Indigo Perfumery was the first stockist to carry the line). Draw closes 8/13/2015.

We announce the winners on our site and on our Facebook page, so Like Cafleurebon and use our RSS option…or your dream prize will be just spilled perfume