Fresh, Dirty, Spicy: Best Mint Flavors
Text: Ksenia Golovanova, author of the telegram channel Nose Republic
Mint recognizable fresh aroma, but many faces: this plant can be medicine, spice, incense. Associations with its smell are also diverse - mint can be soothing, and invigorating, and defiant, and innocent. At our request, perfume critic Ksenia Golovanova made a selection of the most interesting scents with a "mint" spirit.
L'Eau Kenzo pour Femme, Kenzo
5020 rubles
In 1996, when L'Eau Kenzo (then L'Eau Par Kenzo) came out, the fashion for "watery" fragrances still determined the tastes of the public. Today, the aquatic industry is experiencing a new round of development: it is made differently, less straightforwardly - for example, by entering through algae, iodine, and mineral notes of salt and sand. Against this background, L'Eau Kenzo, assembled from water lilies, peppermint, greenish lilac and watery freshness, looks in a good, artless way, like a naive art. Its genre is antipyretic landscape: imagine the grassy stalk of Henri Rousseau's Snake Charmer, and his twin perfume will be L'Eau.
A * Men Kryptomint, Mugler
6200 rubles
Not everyone will have time to buy Kryptomint - the limited edition of 2017, but everyone should try it: it is both good and unusual. Start knocks down the shock wave of peppermint and geranium, and now in the fresh fault splash recognizable Muglerovsky poison - chocolate patchouli with wood chips. The general impression is like an unknown, seemingly appetizing, but suspiciously bright berry in the jungle: the hand stretches, but the sense of self-preservation tells to admire it from the side.
Geranium Pour Monsieur, Editions de Parfums Frédéric Malle
9350 rubles
Geranium and peppermint are made for each other - not by perfumers, but by nature itself: both contain a substance that determines the cool menthol, grassy-green tonality of their aroma. If, again, to turn to art, most precisely, Geranium Pour Monsieur is objectified in the film "Rubens Peel with Geranium" (1801, Rembrandt Peel): a neat, clean-shaven, scholarly-looking young man poses with the title plant prospering in a simple clay pot. So our “Geranium” is a simple, fresh, coquettish-free flower in the buttonhole of “natural man” Rousseau, free in spirit and close to nature.
Dirty, lush
2900 rubles in Lush stores
Simon Constantine - the person responsible for all Lush perfumery - says that the best thing is Dirty (“Filthy”) is sold in Japan and Korea, where the buyer loves clean, light odors. “Muddy”, contrary to the name, is exactly the same - a simple and well-washed bouquet of garni, collected from mint, thyme and tarragon and sprinkled with salt. This mineral chord, fortunately, is more likely a sea than a gastronomic one, taking Dirty from the kitchen to the beach, to dunes covered with gray-gray grass and a thin salt crust at the water's edge.
Vertine, Friedemodin
9800 rubles in the shop "Aromateka"
If the key on the vial of Friedemodin fragrances is a pass to the secret garden, then Vertine is a grass-covered bump in the middle of its pond. The combination of tart, bitter greens (basil, mint, galbanum, fig leaves) with the coolness of the near water makes this scent an ideal summer svezhak, but the local devil - more precisely, the garden spirit - is hidden in detail: in the dampness of the earth, in streams of flower pollen, knocked from the branches of the night rain, in the mineral brilliance of the stones around the pond.
Oriental Mint, Phaedon Paris
9800 rubles in the shop "Aromateka"
The fragrance is made in accordance with the perfume canon of brutal masculinity: here you have ozone with aquatic, and strong tobacco, and ice, like liquid nitrogen, mint. In theory, Oriental Mint could become the new Aventus - the favorite fragrance of woolen wolves from the City, which are registered on the perfume forums under the nicknames of Director and MrEgoiste81. But if “Aventus” is made with a clear love for the good old machismo, then in Oriental Mint - deliberately casually folded from recognizable bricks of “male” perfumery - there is an author's irony in relation to the outdated standard.
Aqua Allegoria Herba Fresca, Guerlain
3239 rubles
Herba Fresca is one of the prettiest mint scents in luxury perfumery, clear and nontrivial. The main trick is the choice of mint varieties: they used perilla, or ciso, whose fragrant leaves are often used in Japanese cuisine. The greenery of perilla has a mild lemon smell with aniseed tones, with which, often in combination with citrus fruits such as yuzu, Japanese chefs like to emphasize the freshness of the main product, be it a transparent piece of fish caught in the morning or a rare clam. At Herba Fresca, Perilla reports a spicy chill — and additional heat-reducing properties — to green tea brewed with lemon.
2 # Nota di Viaggio, Meo Fusciuni
€110
"Two" should reproduce the smell of Moroccan tea, but in the end it turns out another, no less pleasant drink - chamomile decoction, in which garden herbs, lemon and honey were generously put. The first wave is a blow of an exceptionally natural mint mint: the owner of the house quickly and deftly tears green leaves over a silver teapot. The second is a hot and fragrant steam of greenery covered with boiling water. And half an hour later - the thin, barely perceptible smell of pipe tobacco.
Photo: Ile de Bote, Rive Gauche (1, 2), Lush, Lenoma, Haramens, L'Etoile, Man Of The World