Just gaze at this bottle. I do all the time. I love Dior Poison bottles, all of them, and I like to group the whole set together on an antique claw-foot circular mirror atop my dresser. I don’t think the Dior Poisons are the best perfumes of all time, although the original Poison cannot be ignored, and I wore the heck out of the original Hypnotic Poison back in the late 90’s, well before I knew Annick Menardo was a big deal. But above all else I’m smitten with the Dior Poison bottles. The newest flanker, launched in 2010, called Hypnotic Poison Eau Sensuelle (HPeS) is my favorite of all the Poison bottles. It’s a thing of beauty. I love the heft of it, the way it curls into the palm of my hand, somewhere between feeling like a forbidden fruit and a paperweight. For me, the bottle alone is worth owning, no matter what the juice smells like. I know that’s blasphemy, but I trust you won’t judge me.
Monica Bellucci is one sexy lady, no? I love that Dior used Ms. Bellucci for the HPeS campaign because she’s not blond and she’s over 30 and she’s amazingly sexaaaaay. The Dior ads also focused on orchids, purple cattleya orchids, which I used to have in my enormous orchid collection back in Jersey when I had a sunroom for them. The vast majority of orchids are entirely unscented, but the cattleya, the purple flowers feature in the ads, have a trippy sort of sweetness that’s probably the headiest of all scented orchids. Ellen Covey are you out there? Since you are an orchid grower and perfumer I’d love for you to weigh in here and let me know if you’ve smelled HPeS and whether you think it smells like cattleya orchids.
