Cabochard Parfum by Grès

Excellent reviews, if not everything is already said; though we could talk about so many wonders of this delight… I met it when I was older and it became the love of my life. I bought it blindly based on the notes and it was an instant crush. I still remember our first time; I was surprised because I knew nothing like it. I closed my eyes for a couple of minutes, enjoying it while it filled the air and stole my heart. Since then, all other perfumes are just fleeting lovers from a crazy, short night, second-rate, mere caprices. Cabochard is different. He is the faithful, steady, unconditional, definitive lover. He is the one you always return to, who waits with open arms, without reproaches, welcoming and caressing you softly. Then, treacherously, he leaps upon you—pure passion! Clinging to your skin as if there is no tomorrow, accompanying you intensely without giving you a break for hours and hours. Cabochard Vintage is not a simple whim; it has become a necessity. Just as I drown my sorrows in alcohol, I drown mine in Cabochard, and my joys with even more reason, to celebrate and enjoy them. Sometimes, simply Cabochard, a glass of wine, a book, and a cigarette offer me great pleasure; no other fragrance comforts me like this one. Yes, it is carnal, very carnal, dirty, erotic, hard, dry, strange, even grumpy; but it has managed to conquer me to the point that I identify with it. This is how I want to smell and no other way. I can’t even imagine myself without it. I confess I hoard it with greed and avarice out of fear of losing it, and sadly, it is becoming harder to find, and the price has skyrocketed—it seems people like it more than we thought. Sometimes I think I met it at the most opportune moment in my life. Maybe if I had been younger, with different tastes and less trained senses, I wouldn’t have known how to appreciate it. Or do I? I don’t think so. I always believe part of its charm lies in appearing at the exact moment, with the right maturity on my part, because it is a perfume to be taken very seriously and worn with care. We coincide in that it’s not for everyone, but when it conquers, it sweeps everything away, devastating hearts and leaving no one indifferent; some might even hate it. By the way, in a complete review to which everyone says ‘Amen!’, Casablanca77 comments that Cabochard is a cousin of Lancôme’s Sykomore. Unfortunately, I haven’t had the luck to meet that fantastic chypre. But as a compensation for these fortunate twists of the universe, I was recently gifted a perfume that was a complete unknown to me: Kashmir by Milton Lloyd. They say it came out as a clone of Sykomore, and indeed, Kashmir is a cousin of Cabochard Vintage. It’s a rich, classic chypre that I dare not comment on due to the excellent review we have on the corresponding page, a gift from Sidonie, whom I thank for this great discovery. If you like Cabochard, you will probably like Sykomore, and by extension, Kashmir.

Reading clarifying reviews with a handkerchief in hand and testing just a drop of Cabochard, I keep trying to decipher this rare and closed creature. It doesn’t convince me, and I wouldn’t dare wear it, but little by little I try to appreciate it (thanks to Grès for the lesson in olfactory education). I don’t perceive the leather, I only imagine it; I do notice the dry, dusty, astringent bottom of the moss. Dark tobacco, a dense Ylang, and a very mature, almost withered jasmine define the atmosphere. It seems like the fragrance of Madame Edwda that night, ethereal and fatal, dragging her lover through the dirty brothels of Paris until a gray, desolate early morning. It is the Evil because it is God, with the power of life and death, it smells like this, without a doubt. It is erotic anguish, not sensuality. It makes no empty promises, it’s not a fleeting desire, it’s pure flesh: sturdy, without doubts, and with a bitter touch.