Cacharel – Anais Anais eau de toilette review

Anais Anais is a legendary perfume by Cacharel, a French brand that is known for accessories, fragrances, and clothing. It appeared on the shelves of perfume shops in 1978, and with its scent, as well as the advertising campaign that followed, brought it, or rather, revived some forgotten and suppressed values. Cacharel not only stopped at this masterpiece, like many other houses, but also gave us many other fantastic perfume creations: Amor Amor, Eden, Nemo, LouLou, and Noah.

The story that followed Anais Anais is pure perfection and something that all perfumes that hold to themselves and their audiences should aspire to. Starting with a TV commercial that shows us gentle, marble-white girls, but with mysterious smiles like Mona Lisa. Smiles that speak more than a thousand words. From the headline itself, which is: Romance is more than a feeling, now a gift. To the very enigma surrounding the name Anais Anais, which Vosnaki says has two strongholds, one in the writer Anais Nin and her forbidden, erotic literature for youth like the Delta or Venus novels, and the other in the Persian fertility goddess Anaitis.

Anais Anais is a perfume for girls who want to take a decisive step towards the adult world. Many people remember it as their first grownup perfume they received as a gift many years ago, or as the first perfume, they bought from their own money. Anais Anais is a perfume that ignited the libidinous desires of youth surrounded by traditionalist values ​​of society.

Everything about Anais Anais is exceptional, and even the perfume formula, which, despite the decades that have passed since its launch, has not changed. This is achieved primarily by using synthetic components, which, unlike many natural ones, have not been listed as banned as allergens.

The perfume composition is humongous floral, the dominant notes being those of white flowers: jasmine, tuberose, eagle nail, as well as a lily, lily of the valley, magnolia, and hyacinth. What sets Anais Anais apart from other perfumes of the time is the complete absence of the top, fresh notes. As if the perfume makers wanted us to know from the very start what they had in mind when they created Anais Anais. And they were successful, because it is almost unchanged, from the moment it touches your skin until it leaves it.

Fascinating and innovative is the use of the honey note, which, if you follow my blog, you know it is of synthetic origin (phenylethyl phenylacetate). However, unlike perfumes like Jean Paul Gaultier’s Scandal, where they were too cool to make it more natural and more vibrant, in Anais Anais is enriched with the fantastic beeswax absolute (cire d’abeilles).

If we compare Anais Anais with the perfumes that are being served to the youth today, we cannot be optimistic about the direction in which it is developing, or rather to say in which direction the perfume industry is heading down. Not that the ingredients have changed, we cannot blame everyone for the absence of natural substances of animal origin that made perfumes of the 20th century extraordinary, Anais Anais is an example of this. The ubiquitous C14 aldehyde that brings a touch of exotic fruit to every fragrance is present in new as well as old perfumes. It is about the complexity of composition, ideas, dedication. Something that is completely lacking in the commercial perfumes of today. The thing goes so far that the taste of the youth has changed, or rather the distaste. Accustomed to edible compositions, everyone wants to smell like cookies, not even the finest cake. Simple, cheap cookies, like macaroons. This is the aesthetics of today’s youth, a youth who does not understand Anais Anais-like perfumes, and when they try them, in the mildest case, it seems strange to them, and the worst-case like grandma’s perfume. In the German series Perfume that is streaming on Netflix, it is said that feelings are smells. If so, what does this tell us about the feelings of young people today? What does this tell us about the society of the future when young people are deprived of the complex emotions that only one generation before – parents had, grow up, and takes the world into their own hands? I mustn’t think about it, but it is enough for me to put one spray of Anais on a blotter and reminisce about some other times and some other people.

Perfumers are Roger Pellegrino, Robert Gonnon, Paul Leger and Raymond Chaillan.