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mart89gosektor – :
Oui Madame!
Madame De Carven
Eau de Toilette Spray
Purchased on eBay
I have the EDT along with a dusting powder which I purchased where else but the world’s biggest rummage sale eBay the prime online site for vintage fragrance. Madame de Carven is an absolutely beautiful 1979 perfume. She is lady-like and floral, fruity, green, aromatic, smoky, musky, old fashioned but elegant, refined, soothing and calm. She is a British Victorian lady in white gloves dress and hat taking 4 o clock al fresco afternoon tea. She’s surrounded by floral arrangements. It’s a perfume for formal classy day wear and a fragrance of spring and summer. Madame de Carven is a floral with exquisite scented colors of green, white and purple. The whites are the tuberose, the jasmine and orchid. The purples are the iris and hyacinth and the greens are the green notes of galbanum oak moss and vetiver. The result is a charming fascinating floral scent.
Initially the coconut comes through with a matching white milky tuberose. I found it quite innovative for a fragrance opening top note but it does get sweet and fruity with additional citrusy notes of bergamot orange and a peach. This fruitiness is almost like sipping fruity cocktails. The sweetness of the fruit blends with the subsequent florals namely the tuberose but also the carnation the jasmine the hyacinth and the orchid. As far as florals go this one is very floral but it never turns excessive or extravagant. The flowers are the main attraction but they are not overpowering nor are they dull. They are quite romantic.
In the dry down stages the green notes besides galbanum take over. I detect lovely vetiver and oak moss. The moss is the dominant accord. It’s soapy and green, fresh and aromatic. The benzoin and ambers emerge after a while and finalize the fragrance with some smoky aspects and musk. It’s a very clean and soapy scent, with just the right amount of powder and incense. With the dusting powder the scent is quite lovely and makes me feel quite soft and despite it being such an older or mature scent for me it speaks of youth. For me trying on fragrances from before the 1990s or 1980s is the reminder of my younger days and consequently make me feel young again.
Madame de Carven is an easy to wear and easy to love vintage and is a good intro to vintages especially vintage florals. This is in the same league as Miss Dior, Fracas, Miss Balmain, Jolie Madame and Y by Yves Saint Laurent. If you have worn those fragrances you would like this one as well. Again I emphasize that this is a floral and that it’s suited to day wear can be casual but seems more of a formal wear fragrance and it exudes class and sophistication so it would best be worn by an older over 30 over 40 50 and up lady. It’s sweet and powdery soapy delicate and feminine, soothing and inviting. Just my type.
илья02021999 – :
I reviewed this perfume back in 2015. I felt I couldn’t wear this scent at the time as it smelled stale from the bottle. Thank goodness I held on to the bottle and stored it away in the dark. I have recently taken it out for another sniff and decided that the only way to truly check a perfume out is to wear it. (I learned this just recently, by experimenting with both new and vintage scents). The stale notes were gone (maybe they were only in the atomiser?) and instead I am left with a beautiful, deep complex and delicious scent! This perfume is unique to me, I’ve not smelt anything quite like it myself yet and I really love it. The coconut, tropical, frutiness is so comforting and mellow.
lis96 – :
Madame de Carven is a MAGNIFICENT perfume. A wonderful, truly great treasure, from the good old perfume days. Deep, rich and beautiful. Strong and ever-lasting. Glorious. And I must say, she is one of the most complimented perfumes I own, especially by men, but almost as much by women, and even children love it!! It is such a beloved perfume. The children of a friend of mine, a boy and a girl, who are 6 and 7, always throw their arms around me and breathe me in, because I always wear Madame de Carven whenever I visit them. They insist on it!!! Oh I love her!!!
And also I adore the gorgeous bottle!!!
AlisaS – :
Fragrance Review For Madame De Carven
By Carven
Top Notes
Coconut Green Leaves Galbanum Peach Bergamot
Middle Notes
Carnation Tuberose Iris Orchid Jasmine Hyacinth
Base Notes
Amber Musk Benzoin Coconut Oak Moss Vetiver
Call me old fashioned to my face but I love these kind of perfumes. This is a green galbanum based white floral chypre of sublime beauty. Released in ’79, it’s before my time but my mother was already an adult with a lot going on. She never wore this perfume but she recently discovered it and shared it with me. The vintage original is to die for. It reminds me of a couple of fragrances: Ma Griffe also by Carven, Jungle Gardenia by Tuvache and Fidji by Guy Laroche. This has more in common with Jungle Gardenia. Like JG, this has a tropical island air. I also see Fidji as being an island floral perfume, but here the coconut is listed twice as notes so you do get that sweet milky coconut scent. It’s like coconut juice if that was made into a perfume.
Mingling with that coconut water are jasmines, tuberoses and carnations. The white florals are easy to detect and are quite strong. I would say that the white flowers are about the same in their projection and boldness as Giorgio Beverly Hills. A peach and bergamot scent at the top keeps it fruity and delicious. This leaves a trail and has excellent silage and longevity. It can be powerful so spritz with a light hand or only enough to have it as a cloud on you and it follows you wherever you go. It’s not always a good thing to be the woman whose perfume arrives before you do. The oak moss and vetiver dry down is woodsy and also warm with amber. It’s intoxicating and exotic. Smells like a Brazilian rainforest. Beautiful.
kolyakiselev – :
Vintage spicy coconut with green touches? Yes. I get that. Definitely getting a touch of hyacinth too, not a favourite note but we’ll blended enough.
I can actually feel a bit of the tropical feel it was getting at but it’s so alien to what I know these days! There’s no suncream here! Or pina coladas!
The real issue for me is that somewhere back in the late 70s or early 80s when my bottle is from, they put that terrible platic coating on my poor bottle itself and whilst sealed away for several decades has now decayed and stinks!! I’ve had to isolate this poor perfume, wrap it in a bag and put it safely away! It’s a shame as I have a strange soft spot for Craven as I grew to love Ma Griffin but this was a challenge with the plastic overtones!
antidro4er – :
Madame de Carven is beautiful, nostalgic, original, with character… rich …
“Bold and the Beautiful”;-)
I bought some miniatures for allegro and immediately fell in love with this scent. 70/80 perfume of years is my favorite …
I’m dreaming of perfumes 100 ml.
I love it! <3
Ahibis – :
This treasure is a good example of what a tropical scent used mean some decades ago. Nothing of what you would expect today by such an adjective. This has coconut as a leading note but it is never alone but perfectly blended with the rest of the notes. It is a sweet animalic floral, with deep spicy and woody aspects. Very charming, addictive and easy to wear, as long as you are open to vintage smells.
I agree with those who mention this would be in the same family as Balenciaga’s Michelle which is also extremely beautiful but has a more prominent tuberose. But without being twin scents to me.
I love the thick slightly powdery dry down of this lost vintage, such a much better take IMHO on the concept of tropical than that of most of the new cheap yogurt flavor “tropical” perfumes made nowadays.
natali2618 – :
I bought an old bottle of this quite some time ago, in a tattered box, a 30ml frosted bottle with an oversized fake tortoiseshell plastic lid. My first impression on the initial spray was that it was very old fashioned indeed and I couldn’t wear it. I tried it again today, sprayed some on a tissue and left it in a room! The scent wafted around and “WOW”, it really is warm, elegant and rich with a deep fruitiness. When I smell it up close on the tissue though, “Euhhhh!”. It has a sharp, stale kind of smell, is it aldehydes? It reminds me of stale aldehydes and I realise this is why I’d thought it old fashioned. I know I can’t bring myself to put it on my skin because of this. It smells wonderful in a room, but not good close up. I’d love to eliminate that sharp odour and be able to wear the beautiful scent underneath 🙁
kew502speagoessenda – :
This thing probably deserves the prize as the Most Awful Bottle of the entire universe.
KaZuS – :
Action, dear, thank you for your very kind comment. The store is in Athens and it would be nice if you had the chance to visit it. There are still enough vintage bottles to see and try. By the way, I ‘m really jealous of your vintage perfume wardrobe.
AAA7 – :
You should be a writer Bajar! I so wanted to see that store you were describing!
sun krishna – :
There is a small old store in the city full of soaps, shaving creams, shower gels, bulk perfumes and original brand name fragrances. The only customers are men who buy shaving creams and razors and some old women who fill one or two bottles with jasmin or lemon cologne. I had never noticed the window because there was so much stuff there that I would need about half an hour to take notes of what I could see. And suddenly yesterday I did it! And it was worth every minute I spent there. Everything from ’70’s and ’80’s, rare, discontinued, limited editions,legendary perfumes that I can’t find in big stores anymore, everything was there. Today I bought Gucci 3 and the last Madame Carven (100ml, Edt, boxed and sealed). Price? Oh, come on, it’s only a small shop with soaps… There was no tester for them but I’m a huge fun of chypres so I knew that I would like both. Tonight I tried Madame Carven. God, what a smell! Everyone says it’s a floral scent but if there was the term “tropical chypre” I would use it. First I smelled the galbanum and the jasmine, the coconut is distinctive and well blended while oakmoss is always there combined nicely with amber. My mind goes straight back to my childhood when I flipped the glossy pages of my mother’s magazines and I stared in ecstatic wonder at all these glamorous models of the late ’70’s with the hope that when I would grow up I would be like these classy women. It’s a pity that this fragrance is not in production anymore. It was a great work!
anzharyi – :
A beautiful, sophisicated scent with all the crisp and juicy whiteness of fresh coconut and, thankfully, minus the pink candy & bubble gum flavour which usually accompanies such coconutty concoctions.
Has the feel of a true classic which, of course, it is, complete with oakmoss! Am truly amazed at how the sweetness is totally kept at bay whilst the rest of the ingredients go on developing into an evermore grown-up and savvy kind of smell.
It seems to be aimed at hot climates but I’m finding it deliciously warm and comforting for winter. I like all the perfumes from the House of Carven and am delighted they’re still making most of them.
So far so good…
_PASHA_ – :
I got hold of a bottle of this EDT for a very reasonable price, the bottle design isn’t the same as above so it’s possibly a reformulation. That aside, this is a very interesting scent which I have immediately fallen in love with!!
It brings back memories of the 1970’s, it’s the summer in East London, Blondie plays on the radio, some steel drums echo from a garage, the scents of cigarettes, suntan oil, and fruit on the market stalls travel across dusty hot pavements to my little nose! This embodies all those things. It reminds me of wood veneer on cars, daisy duke, saloon lounges in pubs, and sipping a cold coke when it was a real treat. Great!! Glamorous, spicy – fresh, dated and fun.
ufo1 – :
I am all the way with Nebraska on this one! To my nose it is like a strong Fidji.
The fragrance family this perfume belongs to is:
Fidji – Madame Carven – Balenciaga Michelle.
All a bit ‘obligatory’ for collectors like ourselves.
Teselstic – :
Madame de Carven EDT reminds me of Guy Laroche’s Fidji with the addition of some coconut. Must be the galbanum and some of the floral notes they have in common. If you’re a fan of Fidji, I encourage you to give this one a try.
Madame de Carven is a good grown-up scent that smells warm and tropical but doesn’t smell beach-y or like suntan lotion. It’s a fruity floral, but there is no need to fear the fruits and coconut in this one. The fragrance is much more floral than fruity, and the coconut here is freshly-cracked, with no sugar added–present, but not really sweet. The fragrance takes a turn for the green as it dries down.
Madame de Carven is a very unusual fragrance, and smells a bit dated to my nose, but it is still very appealing. This would be a great warm-weather scent for classic perfume lovers who shy away from the modern beach-y gourmands.
Opponeype – :
Wow, do I ever like this perfume! It is a crisp, elegant floral with some of the sophisticated “edge” of Ma Griffe, but softened with the subtle coconut and spice notes. The florals are fresh in the sense of being very realistic and even a touch romantic, not the so-called “fresh” scents of today that smell like fake marine or clean laundry. I only managed to get hold of some EDT, not sure what else is out there since it is discontinued now, but it’s crying out for an Eau de Parfum at least. This one really deserved better than to disappear. (Those discount outlets that do carry it sometimes inflate the price when not out of stock, which they would not do with a lesser scent.) If you can locate it, it is a perfect scent for office professionals or any environment where a refined perfume is required. It is truly lovely and quite unusual.