Folie à Plusieurs
Folie à Plusieurs
240 votes
A unique visual signature based on accords, character, and seasonality
The first spray delivers an ambush of bruised peach and jammy raspberry, their overripe sweetness immediately complicated by neroli-bright orange blossom and bergamot's citric snap. Within minutes, the heliotrope emerges with its marzipan-cherry facets, but there's already something unsettling underneath—a faint mustiness that signals the rot to come.
As the fruit recedes, the floral chorus swells into full voice: iris lends its lipstick-waxy elegance whilst lilac and rose attempt a romantic narrative, but the ylang ylang and jasmine skew indolic, almost sweaty. The 'rot' note fully manifests here—not overtly putrid, but earthily mushroomy, like magnolia petals browning at the edges—whilst the leather begins its smoky, tarry intrusion from below.
What remains is predominantly amber-soaked Russian leather: dark, resinous, touched with benzoin's vanilla-tinged warmth and cedarwood's pencil-shaving dryness. The musk adds a skin-like intimacy whilst traces of heliotrope powder ghost through, creating an animalic-ambery base that feels simultaneously baroque and strangely carnal.
Folie à Plusieurs is a study in olfactory contradiction—a perfume that positions itself at the precise intersection of belle époque refinement and something altogether more feral. That curious note of 'rot' nestled among the florals isn't mere provocation; it's the key that unlocks everything else. The opening's stone fruit sweetness—peach and raspberry bleeding into orange blossom—meets iris and heliotrope with an almond-powder softness that should feel innocent, but doesn't. There's something overripe here, like walking past a Parisian parfumerie in 1915 only to catch the animalic waft from a nearby tannery. The Russian leather brings a birch tar darkness that the benzoin and ambreine attempt to sweeten, but never quite tame.
This is a perfume for those who find comfort in duality, who understand that beauty and decay are uncomfortable bedfellows in the same velvet bed. The jasmine and ylang ylang push indolic, whilst the leather accord—assertive at 76%—creates an almost confrontational base that the vanilla works overtime to soften. What emerges is neither gourmand nor traditionally leathery, but something peculiarly hybrid: a decomposing bouquet pressed between the pages of a leather-bound book, still somehow lush. The name suggests shared madness, and there's truth in that—this isn't a fragrance for the faint of heart, but for those who appreciate perfume as provocation rather than mere adornment.
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4.5/5 (87)