Ineke - Field Notes From Paris

Who hasn´t dreamed about café life in Paris? I can imagine myself resting my feets in high heels at a small table on a Paris café, after a gorgeus shopping in Parisian perfume boutiques.


Unfortunatly, my only visit to Paris is as far from that image as one can come. We where totally lost and had no more cigarettes and at that very time France won Soccer-EM and the whole city of Paris went crazy! OK, it was really fun to see the happy people, but it didn´t make it easier to drive!


Ineke Rühland seem to have got her share of Parisian café life while studying perfumery there. Ineke Rühland is the perfumer and creator of Ineke perfumes. http://www.ineke.com/index.html


This far, Ineke offers six different scents, After My Own Heart, Balmy Days & Sundays, Chemical Bonding, Evening Edged In Gold and the last Field Notes From Paris. You can also order a sample set of all six scent at Ineke´s homepage. As you can see Ineke´s perfumes come in alphabetical order, I think it´s a funny and personal concept. Unfortunatly I haven´t yet tested any of the other perfumes from Ineke.


Anyway, Field Notes From Paris is about tobacco, not about coffee. Well, to smoke cigarettes on a café in Paris is probably almost as usual as drinking coffee.


The tobacco in Field Notes From Paris is an aromatic, golden and almost a little chewy tobacco note. It makes me think more of raw tobacco then of cigarettes or pipe tobacco. The tobacco scent smells very genuin and fresh. Even tough non such notes are listed, I get a very prominent green feeling. Like the tobacco is being mixed with something fresh, green and grassy. The note of tobacco and grass goes in and out of each other in a very interesting way,


During this phase in the perfume, I can´t at all associate to a café. No, it makes me think of an old fashioned tobacco farm, with tobacco hanged to dry in a barn and fields of lush summer greenery outside it. A very living and interesting scent, but there is something in it reminding of mosquito reppelant as well. Don´t misunderstand me, I think the note of mosquito reppelant smells quite nice and homey. Like tobacco grown in Northern Sweden.


Anyhow, the opening and heartnotes are fresh, aromatic, chewy and a little sharp. But after a while the green sharpness wears off and this is when I like Field Notes From Paris the most.


It slowly changes to a creamy, warm and golden gourmand scent, with an interesting note of soft leather. Now, it is more of a café scent I think! Really comfy, nice and great this time of year. If the opening is a little on the masculin side, the dry down is more on the feminin. But, still I consider it easy to wear for both sexes.


The most negative is that the scent become very soft during this phase. As soft as it is really hard to notice it. I have to sit with my nose close to the wrist to smell it. Ans since it has been quite powerful from the start, this is a little dissapointing. Field Notes From Paris is an eau de perfume, but to my nose and skin chemistry, it´s more like an eau de toilette.


As I said, I haven´t tried any of the other Ineke scents, which among them shouldn´t I miss?






Pic: paris_cafe Philip Levine