The Story
Why it exists.
The beginning
Tendre fits comfortably within Faberlic's broader fragrance catalog. The composition leans entirely green-citrus-floral, setting it apart from heavier, sweeter profiles that often dominate women's releases. Nasturtium, an unusual floral note that brings a peppery-fresh lift, pairs with green tea and a touch of ylang-ylang. The result reads less like a perfume and more like a mood: the soft part of a spring morning, bottled without fuss. On first spray, the lemon and lime arrive bright and almost startling, their sharpness quickly tempered by the green tea underneath, which carries a slightly bitter, leafy edge that feels closer to steeped leaves than brewed liquid.
Nasturtium, a flower with a dewy, almost radish-like freshness, carries the green accent with unusual clarity, lending the composition a crisp, vegetal quality that reads more like crushed stems than leafy abstraction. Ylang-ylang anchors the heart, its banana-like sweetness softened into something closer to sunlight on warm skin than overt tropical fruitiness. Green tea moves through the center of the accord, its grassy, slightly tannic edge binding the citrus and florals together without flattening them.
The evolution
On skin, Tendre moves quickly through its registers. The first five minutes are a bright squirt of lemon and lime, sharp enough to wake you up, cut by the bitter-green edge of green tea. Nasturtium arrives almost immediately, lending the opening a watery, just-watered-garden quality that softens the citrus. By twenty minutes the ylang-ylang takes the wheel, turning the composition creamy and tropical without ever going heavy. The drydown is the quietest phase: a faint floral-tea haze close to the skin, fresh rather than powdery, with very little sweetness clinging. It doesn't broadcast after the first hour. That's the point. The lemon-lime opening fades into a quieter citrus memory, more like the idea of citrus than the fruit itself, before dissolving entirely into the floral-tea haze.
Cultural impact
Tendre belongs to a family of light, green-tea fragrances that prioritize freshness over projection. The discontinued status, noted in available databases, has made fresh bottles harder to source today. That scarcity has drawn curious noses toward analogous compositions in other brand catalogs, where similar green-tea and nasturtium pairings can still be found. The fragrance's combination of green tea, nasturtium, and ylang-ylang places it within a recognizable category of clean, wearable scents that emphasize transparency and lightness over dense sillage or sweetness.
