Summer in the village: 7 flavors, after which you want to nature
Text: Ksenia Golovanova
There are many amazing "rural" flavors: There are many smells and sensations in the air of imaginary terrain. Realistic greens, the heat of the stove fire, wheat fields - our perfume critic Ksenia Golovanova talks about seven flavors, because of which you immediately want to go to the country.
“Cities are n *** u,” the group “Krovostok” confidentially informs, “Only the villages are more terrible”. Perhaps it is exactly what they are given in Lonestar Memories - with fat black earth, sheds of sleepers soaked in creosote and coarse rubber fishing boots stuck in river silt. Beauty and chthonic horror are in half here: for smoked rabbit leg, no, no, yes, and wildflowers and grasses peep.
Eau de campagne
Sisley
6640 rub.
for 50 ml
“Country Water” is one of the best green fragrances in the history of perfumery and possibly the strongest work of perfumer Jean-Claude Ellen (along with Déclaration, Cartier, and Osmanthe Yunann, Hermès). There is everything that we love him for - structure, brevity, clearly placed accents, and nothing of what Ellen sins in moments of mental disability - mainly anemic pallor, which some of the author’s songs suffer from. In short, Eau de Campagne is the most important "village" flavor of all times, charged with tart tomato tops, mint, basil and other greens that have captured summer beds. Divinely.
L'eau de paille
Serge Lutens
7800 rub.
for 50 ml
L'Eau de Paille is the last story in the anthology of "anti-spirits" of Eaux, for which Lutans got, and hard: there is neither the usual table-peasant orientalism, nor the dizzying depths in which fans of the brand like to look. There is another - a masterful work of a perfumer in the rigid framework of the genre, in the case of L'Eau de Paille - a wine glass. At first glance, "Straw water", inspired by wheat fields, is not much different from modern commercial wine glasses in the spirit of 1 Million, Paco Rabanne. But it is worth pulling out the first straw from this stack, as interesting details will follow it: beautiful lavender, toasted cereals and delicious hazelnuts.
Datcha et Isba Candle
Mizensir
6250 rub.
for 230 g
Mizensir was brought to Russia quite recently, but by the standards of modern perfumery, she was already a hundred years old at lunch. As a result, there are about the same number of scents and candles in her portfolio - and, imagine, all are good. The secret is called Alberto Morijas: the perfumer gathered a great many perfume blockbusters (remember at least CK One, Flower by Kenzo and Pleasures for Estée Lauder) and continues to do the same thing as part of its own brand - assign Kristen Stewart to face any of the Mizensir tracks and get a commercial hit. However, in working with wax, Morijas allows himself not at all “commercial” liberties: for example, the Datcha et Isba candle smells like a stove in a steppe village, which is drowned in dung trees and dry apple trees.
L'ombre dans l'eau
Diptyque
6400 rub.
for 50 ml
"Shadow in the water" - the gold standard of black currant roses, marriage concluded in the perfumery heaven. Since 1983, when L'Ombre came out, there were quite a few of these, but “Shadow” remains the best composition on a given topic - a three-dimensional projection of the summer cottage with berry bushes, roses and a barrel of water, in which the yellow watering can always get wet. From the neighbors in the genre, the flavor is distinguished by an interesting vegetable chord, something in between a tomato ovary and a pea pod: after all, what a dacha without beds.
Tolstoï Yasnaya Polyana Home Spray
Jardins d'ecrivains
€80
for 500 ml
A beautiful olfactory portrait of Yasnaya Polyana in the period of Tolstoy's simplification: here is Lev Nikolaevich in a poor linen shirt of maslits harness in the stables, he eats his beloved beetroot in kvass, he throws grain into spring arable land. Three whales on which Yasnaya Polyana stands: a fat tarry smell of Russian yufti, dried grass and fragrant benzoin resin, whose fragrant smoke curls over Cadilla in Orthodox churches. The hint of Tolstoy’s religiosity, however, is somewhat clumsy: after the anti-clerical “Resurrection” was released in Russia, Tolstoy was excommunicated from the church.
Green Wheat and Meadowsweet
Jo malone london
3900 rub.
for 30 ml
The spring collection of this year, the English Fields ("English Fields"), has not yet been sold out, but now it’s about to take the time to sniff. If only because it is good. Especially Green Wheat and Meadowsweet is Green Wheat and Meadowsweet, the freshest flavor of the line, dedicated to an unripe wheat field. Meadowsweet - grass that blooms in the first half of summer with lush, lacy white panicles with a powdery honey smell; crispness and delicate botanical sweetness - these are the two main properties of this fragrance.
Photo: Tauer Perfumes, Ile de Bote, Molecule (1, 2, 3), Jovoy Paris, Bloomingdale's