Wrappings by Clinique (1990)

With its oddly prosaic name and season-bending freshness, Clinique's Wrappings is offered only during the holiday season and tends to be pretty hard to find even then at Clinique counters.

A few Clinique sales associates didn't even know what I was talking about when I asked if they had a bottle for me to try, and at the San Francisco Macy's, a (criminal) Wrappings fan swiped the tester bottle! I finally broke down and just ordered a small vial from The Perfumed Court...

This green floral chypre seems more like a summer fragrance than a winter scent you wear while, you're, you know, WRAPPING presents (get it, get it?). It's bright, fresh and exuberant, and reminds me of a more floral and leathery CKOne. (I wonder if the version that came out in 1990 has been tweaked or reformulated. There's something a little chemical-y about this Wrappings that makes me wonder if an earlier version might be nicer. Anyone?)

Top notes: Green note, artemisia, aldehydes, lavender, mace

Heart notes: Cyclamen, rose, jasmine, orris, hyacinth, carnation, ozone

Base notes: Cedar, patchouli, leather, moss, marine, musk

Wrappings starts off green and herbaceous, with the freshest facets peeking out of its juicy, spicy floral bouquet. (It has that 90s-style ozonic quality I don't particularly like, but that just ups the ante on its freshness.) The dry down is my favorite part: mossy and dry with a touch of leather, its top and heart notes softened by orris and pleasantly powdery.

Wrappings is nice enough, but if you want a bracing pine-needle chypre, Shiseido's Inoui is more extreme and evocative of winter woods scents. And if a fresh floral isn't your thing during this season, Caron's Nuit de Noel with its more traditional Christmas-y notes might be a better vintage scent for Christmas.

In any case, I thought I'd wrap up Christmas with a review of Wrappings, and I hope that everyone's enjoying a fragrant holiday and eating to your heart's content!

* Wrappings perfumer Elie Roger passed away November, 2010. He was also perfumer for Balenciaga Ho Hang Club (1987); Estee Lauder Knowing (1988); and Karl Lagerfeld KL Homme (1986).

 

Comments

[JoanElaine]

Oh this sounds so gorgeous! I must try this! I highly doubt any Clinique counters around here have it, so off to PC I go.

BTW, you were soooooo on the money with Rumba's drydown. It's fantastic!

[Perfumaniac]

Glad you liked Rumba's drydown! It's pretty beautiful. (Merry Christmas, JoanElaine!)

[Anne]

Well, perhaps a teeny sample of this from TPC might be in order. Any good green floral chypre is worth a sniff. But ozonic REALLY puts me off. But if it's fleeting ...

Like you, I never see this at Clinique counters, and I'm a regular Clinique customer. I'd heard of it tho', and wondered about it, so thanks for the review. Good guess about the name, although it's odd that it is not a Christmas scent. (Well, it would be where I live.)

[Anna in Edinburgh]

My husband got me a Wrappings gift set from the US for Christmas, and it really isn't a Christmassy fragrance at all: I don't know why Clinique only release stock for Christmas (other than liking the joke about it's seasonal name).

Wrappings would surely appeal at any time of year. For example, it smelt of aggressively fresh ginger-beer! sniffed from the nozzle this time but is so different with each and every compulsive sniff once it is on the skin of my wrists. I can't pin it down:
mellow, plush and velvety green moss;
lemon fizzy sherbet boiled sweets;
bar soap;
some floral note and herbaceous bouquet trying to catch my attention;
a lazy stroll through pre- and post-harvest hay meadows;
a sun-trap in an overgrown just-watered walled garden;
the soil or street after a sudden shower on a hot summer's day;
old face powder ....
It changes and develops and mellows quickly, which keeps on intriguing me the more I inhale. There's sun-baked stone and woodland leaf-litter and hints of lemony sharpness and lots of greenery softness after a rain shower, and I probably won't get to compare it with a vintage version (it was hard enough getting the latest one!) but I'd certainly love to read about it if you find one. This version is just fine by me.

It doesn't last as long as Aromatics Elixir (what does?) but I dearly wish it would. If there's anything else like it, could you advise?

The tester thief was clearly a desperate lover of Wrappings: I don't condone their actions but I think I'm beginning to understand them!

cheerio, and Happy Hogmanay,

Anna in Edinburgh

[Perfumaniac]

Hi Anna, Sorry it took a while for me to respond to your prose poem! (And no, Wrappings isn't very Christmassy.) I like your descriptions: "it smelt of aggressively fresh ginger-beer," "lemon fizzy sherbet boiled sweets," and "a sun-trap in an overgrown just-watered walled garden" especially! It is fizzy and lemon-y. I'm glad you have some! You should try Diorella if you haven't; even the reformulation is nice. Not as fizzy, but definitely complex.

[Anna in Edinburgh]

Thanks for being so understanding *and* for the very welcome recommendation. Diorella's going on the List.

cheerio, Anna in Edinburgh

[Kelly Vickers]

I fell in love with "Wrappings" back in the 90's- and told NO ONE what it was when i was wearing it!
I had 4 bottles of it- then it disappeared!!!!
I still class it as my all-time favourite, and hope to find it again one day.

[Perfumaniac]

Kelly, you can find it online! Clinique sells it during the holidays and eBay always has some. Happy New Year!

[Patty]

Definitely, Clinique's website is the best place to find Wrappings, and it comes in a gift set with body lotion. The bottle will last a while, as it is potent - two spritzes are more than enough for me.

My favorite description of Wrappings comes from a reviewer on Basenotes, who said "you'll think the Christmas tree was wrapped in garlands of roses and jasmine but tipped over and fell into your gin". This is exactly what I get from it. I wore it on Christmas Day, and was impressed again by how complex and multifaceted a fragrance it is. Kind of reminds me of Azuree in that way (another favorite of mine).

But to compare Wrappings to that screechy chemical water, CKOne? Perish the thought!

[Perfumaniac]

Hi Patty, I was really looking forward to getting a Christmas feel from it, but its ozonic/chemical quality (maybe gin-tinged to others?) kept me from loving it and reminded me of a clean, summer scent rather than a holiday one. But it does have its fans!

[breathe31]

Wow! I did not know that Clinique still offered Wrappings. I bought a bottle of it when it first came out (the benefits of having lived in NYC where you get first crack at all great fragrances) and did indeed love it. Like Anna I did not see it as a Christmas season scent. In fact, I believe that I may have worn it in the spring because it was always so fresh to me (kind of like Aliage).Not sure why I never bought a second bottle once I finished it. Yet another chypre that I really liked. I may have to try it again unless of course it has also been reformulated.

[CC]

Well my Clinique's counter does not carry it anymore, and not sure if it will come back, they gave me a source that still stocks it at
www.thefragrancefactory.com
so I will go there to get my favorite again.

[Omar Faruq]

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[Neva]

Hi, Wrappings was my signature scent for many years. It was my favourite Spring scent, absolutely no Winter scent. Sometimes they used to give me the tester bottles in my local perfume shop, because I really love this scent. Then I abandoned it for several seasons and then it was gone...
I know that you can always find it at Harrods in London and sometimes at the airports all over the world and I always have a bottle for the next Spring season.
To me Wrappings is a fresh herbal scent, not in the bitter way, but sweetish, green grass, moss and dew. It lasts very long and is amazingly different than anything else I've tried before or after. I can't tell the difference between the old and the new version, but if there is any, it's not significant at all.
When it first disappeared from the market, they tried to convince me to use DKNY instead...nice scent too, but not at all alike.

[traci]

This is the only fragrance both women and men stop and ask what are you wearing. Its to find but worth the srarch