Here's a Fragrance 411 for Summer 2008: "Pour Toi" by Sarah Barton King
Text, Mark Behnke
Image of Sarah Barton-King by Jean-Pierre Mesclet for Australian Vogue
Edited by Vivian G. Kelly
Sarah Barton-King branched out from her very successful line of accessories created exclusively for her Upper East Side boutique, The Pink Room, in 1999 to create her first fragrance, Parfum No. 1. In conjunction with perfumer Guy Robert they concocted a scent that was centered on the idea of old heirloom roses. It starts with a tart lime and bergamot top which gives way to a floral middle followed by a vanilla base. Their inspiration was Marcel Proust and they created a one–of-a-kind scent that has been highly sought out by rose loving perfumistas ever since.
Since the creation of Parfum No. 1, Ms. King also created an exclusive scent for the online retailer luckyscent called Untitled #4. Here Ms. King’s inspiration was Baudelaire and Alice in Wonderland. In this scent the lemon and peach notes from the beginning lend a clean air to the scent before the lily of the valley and orris join the progression to a lovely amber vanilla base with just a hint of musk.
Both of these scents are unmistakably feminine scents and rightly so. They are made for a sophisticated woman who uses her perfume as an accoutrement to her lifestyle.
Earlier this year Ms. King released her second perfume under The Pink Room brand, Pour Toi. As in the previous cases she looked for classical inspiration and in this case found it in Colette’s Gigi. The idea was to mimic the growth of Gigi from naïve tomboy to the cigar smoking, champagne-drinking sophisticate. This time her collaborator was one of the top perfumers in Grasse. For the top, the tomboy stage, the scent starts off bright and clean with citrus notes of grapefruit and lemon before maturing with our heroine into notes of rose and lily of the valley. Finally as Gigi becomes the sophisticate so does Pour Toi as sandalwood and vanilla, with a touch of musk, anchor the fragrance. All three of her scents develop from citrus through floral to vanilla but each feels different. The vanilla note in the base here is leavened by the presence of the sandalwood and the musk, which keeps it from being the vanilla of the sweet shop. This is a perfect scent for those hazy nights out at the summerhouse. It is not too heavy and exudes lightness all the way through its development. It has the charms of being both crisp and sensuous especially as the base develops. Once again this is very much a feminine scent and entirely in line with what has come before. I would suggest that this scent is likely to appeal to a younger style maven then, in particular, Parfum No. 1. Pour Toi would stand up to an active night of club hopping and get better as the evening progressed. I think Pour Toi is a more complete composition than Ms. King’s previous scents and think it is her best fragrance, so far. Now if we can just convince her to do a male scent.
The Pink Room scents are available at Takashimaya in New York and Scent Bar in LA
All of Sarah Barton-King’s scents, including Untitled #4, are available at:
www.luckyscent.com