Eat Me. Drink Me. Ravish Me! (Vivienne Westwood: Boudoir, Eau de Parfum)

Member Name: zusy

Product:	Vivienne Westwood: Boudoir, Eau de Parfum
Date:	20/03/01 (1282 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: The perfume equivalent of letting expensive chocolate melt slowly in your mouth…

Disadvantages: Your newly found coquettery may get you into trouble!

Oh, Mr Darcy! (Or any other darkly mysterious Byronically tempered male from literature…) Swooning women eating violet crèmes whilst draped elegantly over a velvet chaise lounge…Corsets, thrusting cleavages, the rustle of heavy silk skirts; fluttering fans, flirtatious eyes, beauty spots on the apples of the cheeks. “Fie, fie and thrice fie!”… Coquettish laughter, ‘Dangerous Liaisons’, delicate ankles, bouquets of black-red roses, naughty goings on in the wood-panelled library…

Ahem.

You will have to forgive me. You see, I have just spritzed myself with ‘Boudoir’ silkening spray and I have come over a bit peculiar.

It is a sumptuously gorgeous and complex perfume, and when I wear it, it brings to mind all the things I mentioned at the start of this review.

I finally decided to cash in some beenz (see other people’s ops for details of how you can collect these…) and with the gift certificate I was sent this morning, I decided to splurge on something utterly wonderful and frivolous. I mean, it was awful weather – freezing cold, raining and snowing at the same time. I needed to be pampered. I wanted to be spoiled. So what better than to invest in a devilish new fragrance?

I am very fussy about perfumes. I generally can never find anything I even remotely like, no matter how much other people have raved over a particular kind; no matter how much the charmingly brainless man in the department store sprayed “The daring new life-enhancing perfume from ********* (whatever)” on my wrist this morning, and smiled beguilingly as I wrinkled my nose in disgust… (“It’s you, it’s me, it’s everyone. We’re standing on a beach and eating sugared almonds…” he went on, coming over all Jilly Goulden-ish.) I’m not a standing-on-a-beach-and-eating-sugared-almonds-wit h-a-bunch-of-strangers kind of a gal,
really, and I explained this to him as kindly as possible as I hurried away.

I hastened to the other side of the perfume department, and sauntered amongst the shelves of bottles, wondering what on earth I should try. Gucci’s ‘Envy’ caught my eye, at about the same time as the price tag did, so that was out of the question. My voucher was for £10, and I had set myself a limit of adding another £10 to that, or it’d be in the gutter and gazing up at the stars time for yours truly, the next time my bank statement arrived.

Hmm, quite a limiting choice, it seemed a proper perfume was out of the question, and I lingered over dusting powders and body lotions with an air of desperation and disappointment. Then I came across a display of Vivienne Westwood fragrance sets, and tried a little of the parfum, dabbing it gently with the cautionary air of the easily disenchanted.

I wafted my wrist about a bit, to let the fragrance ‘settle’ (as you are supposed to – if you just spray it on and smell it straight away, you just get a whiff of the alcohol. My mother used to lecture me about such things, perhaps grooming me for an imagined future destiny of fabulous French chateaus and country estates…)

I inhaled deeply and smiled. Ah yes, this was more like it. Wandered about a bit more and smelt my wrist again. Oh, god, it was heavenly! Yes! Yes! Yes! I had found a perfume I loved. My new favourite. I decided to plump for the ‘silkening body spray’ version of the perfume. 100ml so it should last a while, although of course the actual fragrance wont have as much staying power as the parfum.

*** The Bottle & Packaging ***
Sometimes it seems the packaging of a product is more important than the product itself, especially in this society of ‘lifestyle buyers’ you know the kind of thing – Buy this brand of perfume, wear the clothes, get the sunglasses and matchin
g nail varnish, and you, too, can live the dream… All that sort of tosh.

I do like to have glamorous bottles on my dressing table, though… It brings back memories of dreaming to be a movie star. I want to be Louise Brookes or Marlene Dietrich – someone fabulous who wears feather boas with Attitude, anyway. And if I can’t have that, then I at least want a few bloody glamorous bottles, okay? ;-)

Luckily, the silkening spray lives up to my ideals. A tall, satisfyingly heavyweight glass bottle, filled with pink liquid and topped with a dark gold cap – emblazoned with Vivienne Westwood’s famous icon. Lovely, gasp-worthy, and sure to draw envious glares.

*** The Blurb ***
In the sturdy pink cardboard box the bottle nested in, a leaflet was included that described the perfume and the other products you could buy in the range. Here’s an obligatory (and slightly cringe-worthy) quote:

“In my own private place, my ‘boudoir’, I leave the world behind – and find myself. In that intimate moment, there is no-one else but me – the woman I am and the woman I choose to be.”

Hmm. Not sure what that’s supposed to mean, but I can hardly criticise, having waxed lyrical about nonsense in the opening paragraph, myself.

*** Yeah, Yeah, But What Does It SMELL Like? ***

Well now, a whole array of things. It’s very distinctive, yet smells quite ‘old-fashioned’. Not in a frumpy, unfashionable way, you understand, more that it’s like discovering a bottle of Marie Antoinette’s perfume, miraculously preserved, uncorking it and taking a whiff… It would, I am sure, smell exactly like this.

‘Boudoir’ is floral, yet delicately musky. The longer you leave it on, the less floral it becomes. I would say this would fit well in the ‘oriental’ range of perfumes (they are usually described as
‘floral’, ‘woody’, or ‘oriental’, I believe). It has lots of powdery notes, a hint of spices and undertones of vanilla creaminess.

Although it is quite a strong perfume, it isn’t at all like those horrid eighties ones, all alcohol and harshness that gave you (and everyone in a 5 mile radius) a headache. The notes of the fragrance are perfectly blended, and you really can smell everything that’s described in the blurb… (Here are a few more quotes, to give you an idea…):

“First, the distinctive opulence of white viburnum garlands mingle with sparkling notes of mandarin and bergamot…an original blend of tobacco flowers and the spicy vibrance of cardamom and coriander. Then, an intoxicating Bouquet of Florentine orris and English red rose emerges…Vanilla and sandalwood merge with rich amber…”

Ah, Jilly would be proud (although she may have added tar, treacle and burnt pandas or something, for a flourish…)

*** Staying Power ***
I have only sprayed it once on my chest (I keep pulling the neck of my top open to smell it whilst writing this review!) and it has lasted, now, for 5 hours. Goodness knows how long the full-priced parfum would last, then! It has become more delicate as my skin has warmed the scent, and smells mostly or sandalwood and vanilla at the moment. Yummy, I want to eat myself!

*** Products In The Range ***
I am definitely going to invest these:

- Eau De Parfum (naturally)

- Boudoir Bathing Balm (in the form of a softening gel to smooth your skin after bathing…)

- Silkening Spray (which is supposed to make your body smooth and supple wherever you have sprayed it… I wouldn’t go that far, but it does, indeed, leave it nice and soft. I wouldn’t use this in place of a body moisturiser, though).

I’m sure I saw a dusting powder and deodorant stick,
too, although these aren’t mentioned in the leaflet. I’ll have to go back and have a look.

Well, that’s it. I’m a fully paid-up member of the ‘Boudoir’ fan club. I want everything in the range and I want a feather boa (my last one fell apart and looked like a drowned bird sometime ago…) I want a huge fan to flutter and send secret messages with (there are books that explain the ‘language of fans’ that was used in the 18th Century, perhaps I should get one of those first, in case I’m sending out all kinds of messages!)

I must dust off my (boast alert) original Vivienne Westwood corset (got it for a knock-down price in a London Boutique that was closing that day…I skipped for hours…I wore it for days in a row at utterly unsuitable occasions. Now it gets brought out when I want a bit of va-va-vooming confidence ;-)

If you see a cleavage coming towards you in Sainsbury’s this weekend, smelling divine and looking more than a little shameless…it may well be me.

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