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 2, and yesterday was May Day in many countries. In France, a May Day tradition is to give bouquets of maguey, or lily of the valley, to loved ones and friends. Apparently this was a tradition faithfully honored by M. Christian Dior, whose favorite flower was the muguet. This inspired, in turn, his work with Edmond Roudnitska to create the legendary Dior fragrance Diorissimo. As regular readers here know, muguet is one of my favorite scents and the flowers are one of my favorite flowers. In past years, I’ve done daily posts in May for a blogging “May Muguet Marathon”, which has been great fun!
Today I’m wearing my newest muguet fragrance, Cavatina by Parfums Dusita. I really love it, especially at this time of year when the weather shifts between late spring and early summer.
Lilies of the valley in woodland garden; image from Pinterest
Did you do anything special to celebrate May Day? Do you have any new-to-you favorite muguet or other spring fragrances?
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.
Guerlain also issues a muguet fragrance every May in a limited edition flacon.
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?
Sasha Pivovarova with lilies of the valley; Vogue magazine.
Welcome back 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, January 21, and we had snow a few days ago! It didn’t last beyond one day and night, but it was so pretty while it was falling. I’m thankful that we were able to get some needed masonry done in our garden before the cold temperatures and precipitation; and I was able to run around and add mulch to the root zone of some precious plants. I also clustered pots on the ground together as a small measure of protection. Our cold spells are rarely so cold that outside plants are actually threatened, as long as one takes some simple measures. I do keep some garden “frost blankets” on hand in case of need.
The fragrance blog and community Now Smell This had as its Friday “community project” to wear a Dior fragrance in honor of Christian Dior’s birthday, which resulted in a discovery — I may have more fragrances from the house of Dior than any other, which I learned as a result of looking for options to wear this week. This did surprise me, as I hadn’t really planned such a focus, but it results from a few things.
One, two of my earliest fragrance loves — the first two high-end scents I bought for myself — were Chanel No. 22 and Dior’s Diorissimo. Of the two, I wore Diorissimo more often, as it felt less formal than No. 22, much as I do love that. So I’m inclined to take an interest in Dior fragrances.
Two, I have a monthly scent subscription that has been offering decants of Dior’s “Collection” fragrances, and I’ve been collecting those. I like several of them very much, including La Colle Noire and Gris Dior. (The decants may tempt me toward a full bottle at some point — shhhhh! Don’t tell.).
Three, my trip down the fragrance rabbit-hole began when I read Turin & Sanchez’ “Perfumes: The A-Z Guide” and decided to renew my acquaintance with today’s Diorissimo. I made the rookie error of sampling the eau de parfum, a later creation, instead of the eau de toilette, which is closer to the original, and was taken aback at how much it seemed to have changed. So I went on a quest for a substitute, and thus the madness began. As part of that, I started to seek out vintage Dior fragrances, often in minis, so that added to my Dior stash.
Today, I’ll wear vintage Miss Dior in honor of M. Dior’s birthday today and his heroic sister Catherine, for whom the fragrance was named and whose love of flowers inspired it.
Having survived the Nazis’ torture, prisons, and a concentration camp, she came home to Paris after the war and became a noted florist and wholesaler of flowers, together with the man she loved, also a Resistance fighter.
Miss Dior perfume, vintage ad
I know some of you, like Undina, deliberately track exactly how many fragrances you have from a given house. Which ones show up most often in your collection? Any surprises?
Happy May Day 2019! Every year or so, I do a “May Muguet Marathon”, to celebrate one of my favorite flowers and fragrance notes: lily of the valley, traditionally given on the first of May. Below is last year’s round-up; I’ll start afresh tomorrow! Do you have any favorite muguet fragrances I haven’t yet reviewed? Feel free to make suggestions!
As today is the last day of my self-imposed May Muguet Marathon, I’ll do a brief wrap-up. Some of you who were reading this blog the last time I did this, in 2016, will know that I previously discussed some of the all-time greats among muguet fragrances. I did not repeat most of those, so I list them here with links if any newer reader is interested:
I hope you’ve enjoyed this trip down Muguet Lane! Thank you for joining me on the journey! If I’ve overlooked some muguet fragrances you’d like to suggest, please mention them in the comments!
As today is the last day of my self-imposed May Muguet Marathon, I’ll do a brief wrap-up. Some of you who were reading this blog the last time I did this, in 2016, will know that I previously discussed some of the all-time greats among muguet fragrances. I did not repeat most of those, so I list them here if any newer reader is interested:
I hope you’ve enjoyed this trip down Muguet Lane! Thank you for joining me on the journey! If I’ve overlooked some muguet fragrances you’d like to suggest, please mention them in the comments!
As you know if you read any of my posts during last year’s May Muguet Marathon, I love lily of the valley and all things muguet. I wore Diorissimo for a decade and have been happily exploring other LOTV fragrances — but something was missing. And, yes, something really WAS missing, due to IFRA restrictions and reformulations. One of those things was the former level of hydroxycitronnelal (“a lily of the valley aroma-chemical and the main constituent of Diorissimo’s muguet bouquet”, according to the blog Perfume Shrine). Several of the aromachemicals formerly used to create a LOTV scent, such as Lyral and Lillial, are now restricted, I have read.
Enter Lilybelle! “According to David Apel, Senior Perfumer at Symrise, ‘Lilybelle is a molecule with an extremely fresh, green and wet smell. A touch of aldehydes raises its luxuriant floral touch, thus capturing the sparkling freshness of spring.’”
From Premium Beauty News: Symrise innovates with a lily of the valley note from sustainable sources:
After six years of development, the Symrise research team has designed Lilybelle, a new molecule with fresh and transparent notes that are very close to the scents of lily of the valley. This (…)
Notably, Lilybelle is an aromachemical made with “green chemistry” practices and principles, from renewable resources, and it is biodegradable. Take that, IFRA!
I think this is a wonderful development and I share the hope expressed by Mr. Apel that perfumers will use this new aromachemical in creative, innovative ways, including its use in unisex and masculine fragrances. I already enjoy Laboratorio Olfattivo’s Decou-Vert, which is supposed to be unisex. However, I also hope that a talented perfumer who, like me, loves muguet, will create a lovely, feminine LOTV which, unlike Guerlain Muguet 2016, I can afford.
Happy May Day! Last year I did a blogging “May Muguet Marathon“; not sure I’ll be able to do as many posts this year. But to get you started off on the right foot, here is The Candy Perfume Boy’s take on two wonderful muguet fragrances, both of which I love and about which I wrote last year: May Muguet Marathon: Muguet Porcelaine and May Muguet Marathon: Diorissimo. Enjoy your favorite muguet and your day!
Today is the last day of May, so it’s time to address the most legendary muguet fragrance of all: Diorissimo. So many words have been published trying to describe Diorissimo in its many forms and reformulations! CaFleureBon has a wonderful short article by perfumer Michel Roudnitska, son of the legendary perfumer Edmond Roudnitska who created Diorissimo for Christian Dior. It includes his memory of the large patch of lilies of the valley his father planted in order to study and capture their fragrance.
I own a few versions of it: a vintage eau de cologne in the tall, ribbed bottle; a mini flask of eau de toilette from a “Dior Voyage” set that includes Tendre Poison, so it must date after 1994 but before Tendre Poison was discontinued by 2010; a 2013 bottle of the eau de toilette; and a 7.5 ml flask of the parfum from December 2010. (For dating fragrances or cosmetics, try CheckCosmetic.net if you have the batch number; for dating Dior perfumes, read this helpful post by Raiders of the Lost Scent, and for dating Diorissimo by bottle, go to Perfume Shrine; these are all really helpful if you decide to try to buy a vintage bottle). Continue reading →
Thank goodness. I have been eagerly anticipating the release of the new (and last) Hermessence by Jean-Claude Ellena, Muguet Porcelaine. I love his Jardin series very much; the transparency of his fragrances appeals to me although some other perfume lovers do not like it. And I truly love lily of the valley scents, so I was keeping my fingers crossed that Muguet Porcelaine would not disappoint. And it doesn’t.
Before I got my own sample, I read some comments that used words like “cucumber”, “melon”, “watermelon” and even “bubble gum”! No, no, no, I thought, surely Ellena would not play such a cruel joke on perfume lovers who look forward to his new works, or on the lovely lily of the valley flower that has so inspired great perfumers like Edmond Roudnitska, whom Ellena holds in high regard.
I discovered Jo Malone’s fragrances last summer, in the Heathrow Airport where there is a boutique. Unfortunately, I was there in a wheelchair, on my way home from London where I had fallen and broken my shoulder! So my kind husband took me to Jo Malone to pick out a bottle of perfume. The one I picked that day was Red Roses, as I had been visiting rose gardens during our trip. But I also tried last year’s limited edition Lily of the Valley and Ivy, part of the “Rock the Ages” series and I liked it so much that I later bought a bottle.
The aim of the collection was to depict different periods of British history through the inspiration of drama, atmosphere and characters of each of the periods. The collection contains the following scents: Tudor Rose & Amber, Lily of the Valley & Ivy, Geranium & Verbena, Pomegranate Noir (reissued) and Birch & Black Pepper.
Lily of the Valley & Ivy is inspired by the Georgian era of pastel tenderness, green landscapes, gardens and ivy-covered fences. The fragrance opens with green ivy, pink grapefruit and sparkling black currant, with delicate floral heart of lily-of-the-valley and narcissus and the base of beeswax, amber wood and white musk.
Serenity Now Scents and Sensibilities 