Another favorite independent perfumer showed up in my fragrance Advent calendar today: Jeffrey Dame, of Dame Perfumery! Jeffrey Dame has had a long career in the cosmetic and fragrance industry; Dame Perfumery, which he co-founded with his son and runs as a family business, launched its first fragrances in 2014. There are several lines within its brand; today’s scent is one of its “Soliflore” oils, Soliflore Orange Flower. The brand website calls the Soliflore line “photorealistic fragrances”, and that’s pretty accurate.

Soliflore Orange Flower is a light, pretty orange flower, with lemony highlights. I find it less indolic than jasmine or tuberose; the lemony aspect lightens and brightens it. Fragrance writer Ida Meister chose it as a favorite in a Fragrantica piece some years ago, on Dame Perfumery’s “Best In Show“:

Dame Perfumery Soliflore Orange Flower was a revelation to me from the first wearing. So very dense and fulsome, bursting initially with that juicy yet faintly mentholated undertone which renders it photorealistic. It recalls the manner in which tuberose and other white flowers often echo this particular aspect before waxing imminently floral and expansive.

After the juice, sweet, tangy [bergamot?], subterranean-ly medicinal – comes the indolent indolic: divine decay, sex and death. It is the swan song of orange blossoms: “The silver Swan, who, living, had no Note, when Death approached, unlocked her silent throat.”

Orlando Gibbons, 1611

One of the aspects I like very much about Dame Perfumery and its creations is how user-friendly and budget-friendly they are. Beyond the Soliflores, there is the DAME Artist Collection of perfumes; and also the JD Jeffrey Dame Post-Modern Perfume line. Among the Artist Collection, I really like Black Flower Mexican Vanilla; and in the JD line, I like JD Duality, and most of the others I’ve tried. All are priced very reasonably for their quality and concentration; and when one orders directly from the Dame Perfumery website, the order comes with extra goodies like samples, a discount code, postcards, etc.

Soliflore Orange Flower is of a piece with this approach: straightforward, user-friendly, reasonably priced. It’s not pretending to be anything but a straight-up orange flower fragrance. It would be fun to layer it with other Dame Perfumery creations, like the Eaux de Toilette line.

Do you like soliflore fragrances? Do you ever layer them with other scents?