A beautiful dedication to the iris and the alluring woody, powdery aroma extracted from its rhizomes. Rhizomes are the flower’s creeping rootstalk which it sends under the ground to spread around. It takes about 1000 kg of dry rhizomes (carefully dried and cured for four years) to produce just 2 kg of iris butter (also called orris). It’s truly precious - Marie Jeanne spent about a year going through 160 attempts before arriving at their perfect blend of several iris extracts: butter of iris Florentina and iris Pallida and absolute of iris Germanica.
Absolutes are derived from butter to achieve a fresher character. Their goal was to create a modern, refined iris perfume and to depart from dated powdery violet interpretations. Very few perfume houses have access to the ingredients of the same caliber that Marie Jeanne has used so generously in their Iris Pallida.
The perfume is 28% strong, very diffusive, but at the same time tantalizingly delicate.
The crown jewel of the formula, the blend of orris extracts, is set on a pedestal of sandalwood, patchouli, and vetiver. Iris Pallida is an elegant and sensual modern iris perfume, meticulously blended from the most refined raw materials available to perfumers at the moment.
Perfumer: Alexis Dadier
100ml
Sample 2.5ml
NOTES
Top notes - iris absolute, hazelnut accord, cashmeran
Mid notes - iris pallida butter (Turkey + Italy) rose (Turkey)
Base notes - sandalwood (New Caledonia), labdanum (Spain), patchouli, ambroxam
THE BRAND
Marie Jeanne uses natural, cruelty-free natural essences in all its products. Working with Robertet perfumers, Marie Jeanne founder George Maubert – scion of a family that has been very influential in the perfume industry since 1850 – focuses on creating stripped-down, elegant compositions that emphasize the native variety of their ingredients.
Robertet is a bit like De Beers of the fine natural perfume materials - matières premières; for decades, they have been dealing with the finest, purest, and most precious stuff a perfumer can dream of.
