Molinard is a house whose name echoes my own; I find the "Miller" of Italy to be quite the interesting fragrance house. Fragonard, Molinard, and Galimard are all Grasse firms whose lineage stretches back into the 18th and 19th centuries, with Molinard citing 1849 on the purple boxes of its "Les Fleurs" range. As a violet fan, I've always wanted to own the now-discontinued Violette EDT, and finally got a chance to purchase an unsprayed specimen in its "tombstone" bottle, brand-new old stock, still factory cello-wrapped.
Les Fleurs Violette was first released in 1910, then re-released in 1994 as the fragrance reviewed here, alongside a handful of other floral reissues (a couple of which were released in 1993), including Rose, Mimosa, Muguet, Lavande, and Jasmin, with Fleur de Figuer arriving very late to the party in 1999. Looking at these, I really wonder what their angle was. The 1990s was largely about spiced fruitchouli/ambery things, yet Molinard reverted back to very spare and simple Victorian and Edwardian soliflores, eschewing the bombastic, Angel-fueled trends of the time for a demure sensibility more suited to lace-collared dowager duchesses than leather-chokered glam-rock ingénues. Violette is exactly that: demure. It's as shy as it gets, with little more than a bright and semisweet Parma violet note, the requisite sharpness of violet petrol, and a soft, subtle, and very powdery base of some understated white musk. The whole affair is direct, dry, and one-note. There isn't even violet leaf to add any aquatic or spicy tones. It's 100% chalky-petrol violet flower, with only the shadow of a hint of juicy sweetness in the first two minutes.
I'm not gonna lie: I expected more. But then again, I didn't expect very much more, because I wanted a pure violet soliflore in this conservative style. I'm not even sure my expectation being crushed by reality is a bad thing; what more could this kind of fragrance do? Yes, my $10 bottle of Violetas Francesas cologne smells pretty much identical, at a lower concentration, but if I splash that on and follow it with a healthy spritzing of Molinard Violette, I'm about as violet as a violet-lover can be. Yardley's April Violets offers coy suggestions of stone fruits and watery violet leaf with a tingle of botanical pepper, and feels downright Rococo in comparison, but if I'm in the mood for that kind of violet non-soliflore, I know where to go, and it isn't here. Like Yardley, Molinard's material quality isn't mind-blowing, but it's very good, and maybe a little better. Its ionones and irones are delicately balanced upon their powdery undercarriage, which says "competent perfumer." Longevity is 12+ hours. You want a solid, no-games, no-frills violet? This is it. You can still find a few bottles on eBay for not insane prices if you apply yourself, so I recommend looking there first, and/or perusing the frag-forum swap boards.