The Story
Why it exists.
The beginning
Mon Premier Parfum, My First Perfume, launched in 2011 as the fresher, more floral counterpoint to the 1997 original. Annick Ménardo, who signed that debut, returned to continue the story she started fourteen years earlier. The brief was clear: same house signature, less regression. More assumed femininity. The bottle took the bitten apple form and kept the color scheme, but the juice inside moved toward something the perfumer called sophisticated elegance. Morsure d'Amour, the Bite of Love, suggests something greedy, something that takes what it wants.
What makes this composition unusual is the licorice flower at its center. Licorice as a note in perfumery tends toward the medicinal, anise, black jelly, the sharp end of a Twizzler. Here, Annick Ménardo softens it with almond and vanilla in the opening, then grounds it with iris and jasmine in the heart. The effect is not medicinal at all. It's floral-gourmand, sweet but not syrupy, with a quiet herbal undertone that keeps the sweetness honest. Violet leaf in the base brings a green, slightly ozonic quality that prevents the drydown from going entirely warm. Incense and musk close it out, close enough to skin to feel intimate, not loud enough to announce itself across a room.
The evolution
The opening hits fast: almond and vanilla upfront, cherry tartness underneath, lemon zest brightening everything for the first twenty minutes. Then the hand-off. The cherry recedes and the licorice asserts itself, not anise-sharp, but softened by the iris and jasmine now blooming around it. This is the heart's job: to shift the conversation from confection to flower. By hour two, the incense begins its slow climb. Violet leaf keeps it green, almost dewy, while the musk holds everything close to skin. Six to eight hours on most skin types, moderate sillage, this is not a fragrance that fills a room. It waits for you to lean in.
Cultural impact
Lolita Lempicka occupies a specific niche in French perfumery: literary, romantic, with fairy-tale undertones and a knowing edge. The apple-shaped bottle is one of the most recognizable in modern fragrance. The house built its identity on an unusual combination of anise, licorice, violet, and vanilla, a signature that has survived multiple flankers and perfumer changes since 1997. Le Premier Parfum EDT represents a mature chapter: less regressive, more confident, still unmistakably the house.
