What to buy in spring: 7 noble floral aromas
Text: Ksenia Golovanova, author of the telegram channel Nose Republic
Some adore floral aromas, others are wary - often exaggeratedly “tender” and “feminine”; they can scare away those who do not want to fit into the conventional notions. We asked our perfume critic Ksenia Golovanov to collect a bouquet of the best representatives of the species to make sure that the flower family is not what it seems at first glance.
Lily of the Valley, Floris
9000 rubles
Established in the 1730s, the London-based brand Floris was the first to have stores with shop windows and a stable range of products: before that, pharmacists and single perfumers were blended with perfumes, usually to order. Lily of the Valley in Floris from the "late" - made in 1847, but since then the formula has changed several times. The owners of the new and vintage versions say that the "remake" is better - more natural and fresh. Anyway, Lily is an exemplary lily of the valley in a purely English perfumery tradition where all lilies of the valley smell a little like a clean towel from a hotel in a respectable wilderness: May flowers, lemon freshness and well-washed musk.
En Passant, Editions de Parfums Frédéric Malle
5280 rubles
Perfumers like to refer to the topic of rain - certainly very attractive, but difficult to work with: often the result is either something pale and expressionless or, conversely, sharp and unnatural. There are exceptions, for example, Frédéric Malle En Passant and Guerlain Après l'Ondée. They are often compared: in both beautiful, very natural lilac and spring freshness of rainwater.
But if Après l'Ondée with its sad, melancholic irises and violets is a gloomy Vrubel's “Lilac” (the scent and picture, by the way, are almost the same age), then En Passant is greenish-white ragged hats, of which Edouard Manet gathered his own ” A bouquet of lilacs. " The rain has just ended: warm steam rises from the ground, pollen has been nailed to the leaves and I want to take and enter the lilac bush, like in Narnia - maybe, at least on the other side, the spring lasts a little longer.
DKNY Be Tempted Eau So Blush, Donna Karan
3800 rubles in the shops of the network "Riv Gosh"
In the prolific Be Delicious family of completion - Eau So Blush. The composition indicated is correct to the name: indeed, everything “ruddy” - pink grapefruit, red currant, bloody orange and peonies, also pink on the idea. And although Be Delicious has more flanker than apple varieties, this one is very nice, in particular, due to the fact that it grew and fell not so far from the progenitor apple tree. As fresh and tart as the classic Be Delicious, Eau So Blush shows a beautiful contrast between the sonorous citrus head and round, fruity notes at the core. From her I want to pick out, like a bone, a rough cedar, but even he stops bothering half an hour after application.
Burberry Weekend for Women, Burberry
3359 rubles
Weekend - a dispatch from the perfumery of the 1990s, that battalion that held a green, mossy, sparsely populated height over the bad 90s aquatic sea that was poured by the sea for a decade. Breathing on this hill is easier than below: all the moisture in the Weekend was absorbed by hyacinths, irises and some underground silvery tubers - nothing squints underfoot, but the proximity of a cool, watery spring is already evident. In theory, in the wake of today's popularity of iris, Weekend should have returned to hot rotation at chain stores - but it was a bit forgotten about it, like last year’s hyacinth bulb.
Hummingbird, Zoologist Perfumes
$125
The Canadian Zoologist Perfumes brand hasn’t reached us yet, and in order to try what a real perfume art-house smells like, you have to make minimal efforts - order a set of probes from London (the nearest point of sales to us) or ask someone to bring them from there. Briefly about Zoologist Perfumes: each fragrance of the line is dedicated to some beast and its habitat, such as panda and its bamboo grove, beaver and the dam built by him in the middle of the river, monkeys and the mountain temple in which they live.
A little more about the Hummingbird: so, as conceived by the perfumer, the hummingbird of a latifundista, who owns a huge garden with lilacs, peonies, mimosa, honeysuckle and lily of the valley smells like. The attention of this bird does not linger for long at all - be prepared for a kaleidoscope of floral and fruit notes.
By Any Other Name, Altaia
16 000 rubles
Altaia is the second brand of Eau d'Italie brand owners. But if he was remembered for his successful collaboration with Bertrand Duchaufour, who made the best flavors of the line, then Altaia can be considered a benefit of Daphne Bugey. Now the perfumer is incredibly in demand: conditionally niche brands like to work with her, who need to make a commercially successful product and not completely lose face - Bugey, for example, is the author of several new L'Artisan Parfumeur and Penhaligon's.
By Any Other Name - "Though you call it a rose, though not," a line from Romeo and Juliet is a classic "byzhe", so bright and charming that everyone who has a heart will like it. If there is no heart, just appreciate with your head how finely the combination of rose, peony and litchi is worked out here, which has become a kind of perfume template: a round, golden fruitiness is grafted on the spring By Any Other Name rose - the promise of a soon summer.
Le Temps d'Une Fête, Nicolaï Parfumeur Createur
€ 42 for 30 ml
For all daffodils narcissus, green, sweet, like summer hay, with a characteristic shade of warm barn - flowers and something animalistic on a classic chypre skeleton. Now Nicolaï’s perfumery is for some reason sold in the Moscow boutique "Accents" - along with Limoges porcelain and embroidered pillows, but Le Temps d'Une Fête is not there, and on the website of the brand too. But if you write ([email protected]) or call Nicolaï directly (+33 1 44 55 02 00), they say that the “Holiday” can still be ordered - and for quite reasonable money.
Photo: Rive Gauche, TSUM (1, 2), Randewoo (1, 2), Zoologist, Lenoma