Perfume Chat Room, May 18
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Perfume Chat Room, May 18

Welcome to the weekly Perfume Chat Room, perfumistas! I envision this chat room as a weekly drop-in spot online, where readers may ask questions, suggest fragrances, tell others their SOTD, comment on new releases or old favorites, and respond to each other. The perennial theme is fragrance, but we can interpret that broadly. This is meant to be a kind space, so please try not to give or take offense, and let’s all agree to disagree when opinions differ. In fragrance as in life, your mileage may vary! YMMV.

Today is Saturday, May 18, and we’re in final preparations for our trip to Normandy and Brittany, the one we were planning to take in 2020. This will likely be our last big all-family trip abroad for the foreseeable future. Since our youngest was 5 years old and able to pull his own rollaboard bag, we’ve taken our kids to Europe or another international destination almost annually, riding the coattails of my dear husband’s travel for work. Usually he flies to Europe, works for a week or more, then we have joined him using some of his millions of frequent flyer miles. It costs less take to take our family of five to Europe for a week than it would to take them to Disneyworld! (I know that because one of my sisters used to take her three kids every year to Disneyworld).

1789 map of the provinces of Brittany, Normandy, and others; image by Ty’s Commons.

Now that the kids have all finished college and launched into jobs (the youngest will start his on July 1), it will be more challenging to coordinate schedules. And now that I’ve retired, and my husband will likely follow in a year or two, we need to spend a bit less on travel, lol. But for 17 years, minus pandemic time, we’ve been able to share some favorite countries and discover new ones with our three children, which has been a privilege and a blessing. I hope we’ve shown them enough that they continue to explore Europe and other continents on their own.

Green hot air balloon sailing over fields
Green hot air balloon; image from vistivictoria.com

Thanks to rickyrebarco, I no longer have to try to figure out how to get my hands and nose on Patricia de Nicolai’s limited release muguet scent. Thank you so much! Since we are bypassing Paris, it would have been challenging to find it even in France and even if it hadn’t sold out so quickly. With that itch scratched, I don’t have any particular fragrance in mind to bring home as a perfume souvenir, which is good because I truly have so, so many. I. packed most of them away to make room for the stuff we had to move out of the basement so our oldest could move into that as an apartment, and I plan to sort, organize and catalogue them this summer after we get back. I think my upcoming olfactory adventures this month will focus mostly on food and drink, which are excellent in both regions we will visit!

Have you planned any upcoming olfactory adventures of any kind? Do tell!

Perfume Chat Room, May 10
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Perfume Chat Room, May 10

Welcome to the weekly Perfume Chat Room, perfumistas! I envision this chat room as a weekly drop-in spot online, where readers may ask questions, suggest fragrances, tell others their SOTD, comment on new releases or old favorites, and respond to each other. The perennial theme is fragrance, but we can interpret that broadly. This is meant to be a kind space, so please try not to give or take offense, and let’s all agree to disagree when opinions differ. In fragrance as in life, your mileage may vary! YMMV.

Today is Friday, May 10, and I got a facial earlier today, in anticipation of our big graduation weekend. The young woman doing the facial spritzed me with the NICEST smelling toner: neroli. I’ve always liked neroli but it hasn’t been at or even near the top of my list of favorite notes. That may need to change! Do you have any neroli fragrances you would recommend?

Citrus aurantium; image from Wikipedia
Perfume Chat Room, May 3
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Perfume Chat Room, May 3

Welcome to the weekly Perfume Chat Room, perfumistas! I envision this chat room as a weekly drop-in spot online, where readers may ask questions, suggest fragrances, tell others their SOTD, comment on new releases or old favorites, and respond to each other. The perennial theme is fragrance, but we can interpret that broadly. This is meant to be a kind space, so please try not to give or take offense, and let’s all agree to disagree when opinions differ. In fragrance as in life, your mileage may vary! YMMV.

Today is Friday, May 3, and I am still obsessing over roses. Real-life roses, in my garden and online, and also in perfume (though I don’t wear much perfume on days when I’m spending a lot of time working in the garden).

But in fragrance, I have taken my usual May detour into the realm of muguet, or lily-of-the-valley, honoring May Day and the yearly appearance of these fragile, fleeting blooms. Unlike roses, lilies of the valley don’t rebloom during their flowering season. One and done! They’re also challenging to grow en masse here in the hot, humid Southeast, though my sister-in-law has succeeded in growing the kind of large patch of LOTV here that she and I both knew from our childhoods in Connecticut, where they grow and spread like weeds.

Nurturing hopes of perhaps getting my hands and nose on a tester of Patricia de Nicolai’s new — and already sold out — muguet perfume, Une Fleur en Mai, I recently tried her 2009 creation Un Coeur en Mai for MDCI. It’s not a muguet perfume but it is a floral green fragrance and very lovely. Dominant floral notes are rose and mimosa, with a hefty dose of green galbanum. I really like several of her fragrances for her own line, like Odalisque, Rose Royale, Odalisque, New York, Musc Intense. I think I need to add to my reviews of her fragrances!

Do you have any of Patricia de Nicolai’s fragrances, either under her own line or created for others? What do you think? Any favorites?

Bottle of Patricia Nicolai's Musc Intense eau de parfum
Musc Intense, by Parfums de Nicolai; image from http://www.pncicolai.com.
Happy May Day!
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Happy May Day!

Today is the first of May, traditionally celebrated in France by giving bouquets or sprigs of muguet, or lily-of-the-valley. As regular readers know, I love lilies of the valley and I love muguet fragrances. In some past years, I’ve done a “May Muguet Marathon“, posting every day about a muguet fragrance or the flower itself. I won’t do one this year, because of our son’s college graduation and then our family’s two-week trip to France itself. Got a lot going on!

I did want to share this lovely photo of Maison Dior’s flagship in Paris, decorated with huge sculptures of lilies of the valley:

Huge sculptures of lily of the valley decorating Dior's flagship boutique in Paris.
Muguet at Maison Dior; image from Maison Dior.

Isn’t that magnifique? Christian Dior is much on my mind these days, after having watched the Apple TV series “The New Look.” I loved it — so well done, and the acting was terrific, including Juliette Binoche as the very unappealing Coco Chanel. The series is about what happened to Christian Dior and his sister Catherine during the Nazi occupation of Paris, with the parallel story of Chanel’s alleged collaboration. Only Binoche could have pulled off the balanced acting required for that role. Both narratives are based on separate books by Justine Picardie: a biography of Chanel that includes the war years, and one of Catherine Dior, focused on her experience as a member of the French Resistance and also as an inspiration to her brother. The perfume Miss Dior was named for her.

I’ve read the book about Catherine Dior, Miss Dior; A Story of Courage and Couture, and I highly recommend it. Have you read it, or watched the series?

Perfume Chat Room, April 27
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Perfume Chat Room, April 27

Welcome to the weekly Perfume Chat Room, perfumistas! I envision this chat room as a weekly drop-in spot online, where readers may ask questions, suggest fragrances, tell others their SOTD, comment on new releases or old favorites, and respond to each other. The perennial theme is fragrance, but we can interpret that broadly. This is meant to be a kind space, so please try not to give or take offense, and let’s all agree to disagree when opinions differ. In fragrance as in life, your mileage may vary! YMMV.

Today is Saturday, April 27, and we’re almost at the start of May! I won’t be doing a blog May Marathon this year because we’ll be out of the country for the second half of the month, and before that we have our youngest child’s college graduation. So I’ll be running a different kind of marathon getting ready for all that! However, as most of you know, I just love lily of the valley, or muguet — both the flowers and the scent. The first of May in France is traditionally a day when the French give or wear sprigs of muguet, and French perfumers in particular have created some wonderful muguet fragrances, the most famous being Christian Dior’s Diorissimo.

Maison Dior, Paris

Guerlain also issues a muguet fragrance every May in a limited edition flacon.

Bottle of Guerlain Muguet 2016 fragrance
Guerlain Muguet 2016

So you can imagine how excited I was when I read two weeks ago on “Now Smell This” that Patricia de Nicolai was releasing her own limited edition muguet fragrance, to be sold only in their boutiques, called Une Fleur en Mai. I began immediately to plot how I might get a bottle, since our trip in May will be to France. Alas! according to the company website, it is already sold out! Maybe we’ll get lucky and the firm will add it to their regular line.

I know that muguet is polarizing to many perfumistas — some love it, like me, and others loathe it. Where do you fall on that spectrum?

Fashion model Sasha Pivovarova with lilies of the valley; Vogue magazine.
Sasha Pivovarova with lilies of the valley; Vogue magazine.
Perfume Chat Room, April 19
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Perfume Chat Room, April 19

Welcome to the weekly Perfume Chat Room, perfumistas! I envision this chat room as a weekly drop-in spot online, where readers may ask questions, suggest fragrances, tell others their SOTD, comment on new releases or old favorites, and respond to each other. The perennial theme is fragrance, but we can interpret that broadly. This is meant to be a kind space, so please try not to give or take offense, and let’s all agree to disagree when opinions differ. In fragrance as in life, your mileage may vary! YMMV.

Today is Friday, April 19, and our oldest daughter just got accepted into her top choice graduate program! We are so thrilled for her, and proud of her hard work.

Speaking of work, I’ve been hard at work in my garden for days, since the cold rain stopped. The rain is paying off in many fragrant flowers, though. Fragrance is one of my top requirements for a new plant, though I do make occasional exceptions! The rose below has become a favorite cause it is so reliable, healthy, and fragrant.

Honey Nectar rose

Roses are not the only fragrant blossoms in my garden right now:

Fragrant native azalea

The native azaleas of the Southeast have a sweet fragrance like a cross between honeysuckle and jasmine. The delicacy of the flowers belies how far their scent carries. I think it is one of those scents that would be very hard for a perfumer to replicate.

Speaking of perfumers, what did you all think of the news that Frederic Malle is leaving the brand he founded? Do you have a favorite in that line?

Perfume Chat Room, April 12
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Perfume Chat Room, April 12

Welcome to the weekly Perfume Chat Room, perfumistas! I envision this chat room as a weekly drop-in spot online, where readers may ask questions, suggest fragrances, tell others their SOTD, comment on new releases or old favorites, and respond to each other. The perennial theme is fragrance, but we can interpret that broadly. This is meant to be a kind space, so please try not to give or take offense, and let’s all agree to disagree when opinions differ. In fragrance as in life, your mileage may vary! YMMV.

Today is Friday, April 12, and we had a total solar eclipse in the US this week! It was actually quite exciting, even though I don’t live in the path of totality. NASA had live-stream coverage from several locations, and that included scanning the crowds in various venues to show their reactions when the sky went dark. Where I live, the outside light got dimmer and we could see crescent-shaped shadows where the partially obscured sun’s rays were filtered by coming through the leaves of trees (a phenomenon I remember from 2017).

Eclipse shadows

In 2017, I chose Jean Patou’s L’Heure Attendue as my SOTD for that eclipse, the Collection Heritage version by Thomas Fontaine. Sadly, Jean Patou perfumes are no more, having been equally and totally eclipsed by its new owners. This year, I wore Guerlain’s Chant d’Aromes, which I’ve been alternating recently with Diorella. They have several notes in common and I think both can be fairly described as “citrus chypres.” A modern citrus chypre that I love is 4160 Tuesdays’ Meet Me On the Corner, by Sarah McCartney. Interestingly, although L’Heure Attendue is definitely not a citrus chypre, it too shares some of the floral notes that Diorella and Chant d’Aromes have in common. Do you associate any fragrance(s) with eclipses, or the sun, or other natural phenomena?

And speaking of natural phenomena, here are my azaleas at peak bloom recently:

Perfume Chat Room, March 29
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Perfume Chat Room, March 29

Welcome to the weekly Perfume Chat Room, perfumistas! I envision this chat room as a weekly drop-in spot online, where readers may ask questions, suggest fragrances, tell others their SOTD, comment on new releases or old favorites, and respond to each other. The perennial theme is fragrance, but we can interpret that broadly. This is meant to be a kind space, so please try not to give or take offense, and let’s all agree to disagree when opinions differ. In fragrance as in life, your mileage may vary! YMMV.

Today is Friday, March 29, and it is Good Friday in the Western Christian world (the dates when the Eastern Orthodox Church celebrates Good Friday and Easter are different). For the first time, I was able to go downtown to my church and help with all the labor that goes into the magnificent floral arrangements we enjoy at Easter. Even though Good Friday is a somber day, it was lovely to work with my hands with a very congenial group of fellow parishioners and handle the gorgeous flowers. The large room where we were working was filled with their fragrance, especially the lilies but also roses and stock.

There were many other flowers but those were the most fragrant. As I smelled it, I kept thinking it reminded me of an actual perfume, and then I realized what it was: Cartier’s Carat.

A fraction of the flowers to be arranged for Easter Sunday

Created by Mathilde Laurent in 2018, I feel as if Carat has never gotten much vocal love among perfumistas. I like it very much, especially in the spring. It was meant to constitute a fragrant evocation of diamonds, with their prismatic reflection of the whole color spectrum, each component color represented by a different flower.

To accomplish this, the perfume maker decided to imitate an optical phoneme that is characteristic of diamonds: diffraction of color. So she chose seven different fresh flowers that, when combined, formed a new, abstract flower.

The composition represents the colors of rainbow in the form of flowers; violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange and red are captured with the notes of violet, lily, hyacinth, ylang-ylang, narcissus, honeysuckle and tulips.

Per Fragrantica, top notes are Green Notes, Pear and Bergamot; middle notes are Hyacinth, Tulip, Narcissus, Lily, Honeysuckle, Violet and Ylang-Ylang; base notes are Mimosa and White Musk. I agree with one reviewer who also smelled lilac; I have a small lilac blooming on my patio right now, and it definitely makes an appearance in Carat. It reminds me of the lilac in Jean Patou’s Vacances, the Collection Heritage version created by Thomas Fontaine in 2014.

Now that my nose has associated Carat with arranging Easter flowers, I think I’ll have to wear it on Easter Sunday, together with a hat. If you celebrate Easter or another spring holiday, do you have any favorite fragrances you associate with the holiday? And do you have any special Easter or other spring holiday traditions?