Private Label by Jovoy Paris
Image Credit: jovoyparis.com
When I ventured out to find the best Vetiver there is, Jovoy was presented as one the options for me. However, I was very confused between Incident Diplomatique and Private Label, both which have notes of Vetiver. Unable to decide, I ordered the entire sample set of the house. The sample set was a nicely decorated and packaged set with about 16 fragrances, and I ended up not latching to any of the scents, and as a result, put Jovoy in the backburner.
Few months after I had had the chance to try other perfumes, I went back to the sample set and ended up liking several fragrances. I first purchased Psychedelique which the fragcomm calls (and is) a Patchouli bomb. Psychedelique created a Patchouli effect for me not very different from the Vetiver effect Nishane’s Sultan Vetiver created for me.
Jovoy is one of my favorite houses — not least because they make some excellent perfumes. Their juices are high quality, the bottles are well-made, the packaging is brilliant, and most of all — the house is very understated. The price point of most of their perfumes puts them somewhere in-between mass-marketed fragrances and overpriced niche fragrances. So I decided to visit the store on rue de Castiglione in Paris. I was completely taken away by their entire philosophy — both their website and their physical store carry an entire array of niche and high-quality fragrances in addition to their own. They are not pushy/ salesy, and they are certainly not giving preferential treatment to their own products. Here is a perfume house — no less — who is letting customers make their own choices, including buying perfume houses they compete with. Contrast this with the average department store experience in the US, where there are 20 sales sharks sniffing the ocean for blood (i.e. you), and once they do, they will circle around you, and literally fight over who gets the first dibs on you. And the department stores are, by definition, not a house and they are in a better position to be customer-centric, as opposed to house-centric. I wish stores like Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom, Saks, and Bloomingdale visit the Jovoy Store in Paris, and learn what customer service should look like.
So, during that visit, I purchased Private Label, and Incident Diplomatique from the store. Here is the notes breakdown —
Private Label
Top — Papyrus
Heart — Vetiver, Patchouli
Base — Sandalwood, Cedarwood, Birch, Cistus
Incident Diplomatique
Top — Mandarin
Heart — Vetiver, Nutmeg
Base — Patchouli, Sandalwood
Going just by the notes tree, you’d think there is a huge overlap — Vetiver, Patchouli, Sandalwood. But the experience of these fragrances are poles apart. Incident Diplomatique for one, is 100% kosher for office, well-rounded, perhaps because the smoothening effect of Sandalwood. Private Label on the other hand, is not for the weak-hearted. It is a daring fragrance which opens with a huge bomb of Papyrus and continues into the woody zone (Patchouli and Vetiver). While you can brave it in an office setting, it will certainly invite inquiries. Private Label is also one of the handful of fragrances which got me an explicit comment/ compliment.
All three Jovoys I have are very enjoyable and full-bottle worthy. But if I were to live with only one bottle of Jovoy, it will be private label. There are also other Jovoys that people swear by, but I have not been blown by. Yet.