Gianfranco Ferre by Gianfranco Ferre

Gianfranco Ferré was a perfume, as Selene says, very sweet. Today that word is misleading, because modern sweetness is torrefied, burnt, sticky, and dirty. Ferré and its peers are exuberant, chaotic, honeyed, fruity, yet always natural. Natural like a cooking of flowers, fruits, and syrups; yes, manufactured, but without that gross ethyl maltol that drips from every froutchouli in the infinite spaces thanks to La vie est belle, which could also be called Hell is beautiful, but that’s just a matter of taste. Ferré is a perfume that could have been released a decade later; it feels more like a transitional fragrance between the eighties and nineties than a 1984 launch. In the eighties, enchanting resins or narcotic chypres were more in style to wear with sheer stockings and kilos of lacquer; these molotov-style honeyed cocktails à la Kenzo Kashaya would take a few years to arrive. The funny thing about Ferré is that it doesn’t list fruit at all, yet your brain can’t imagine anything else. Past the initial shock—a dizzying firework of pollen, pistils, and nectars—Ferré takes on a stunning precious banana tone. A fleshy, carnal banana, comforting, appetizing, and packed with crushed and battered tuberose and narcissus, squeezed to extract the most insolent and sexual juice they hold inside. This fruity blast with a shampoo-like taste was like having a tiny caramel made of a thousand essences in your mouth, a candy that made your palate, taste buds, and nasal cavities tingle. I don’t want to be too heavy repeating how sweet and toxic it was, but the first half hour of this fragrance was an incredible experience. Unfortunately, at some point during the transition, ylang made an appearance; to the initial almost psychedelic nature party, it added its fruity musky tone, much less narcotic than the narcissus, hyacinth, and neroli, but above all, a heavy orchid note (a note I love nothing more) gave it a slightly uglier, synthetic aftertaste (to me, the orchid note always smells artificial, like a cleaning product). In the dry-down, the glorious frenzied sweetness of the beginning remained, but much lower, with a slightly spicy edge and less luxury, leaving memories of dirty wool. Gianfranco Ferré is a perfume well worth considering; it was modern and visionary because it anticipated the floriated and fruity blooms that reigned during the early nineties.