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?
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?
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:
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?
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 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?
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:
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?
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 22, and yesterday was Fragrance Day, per the Fragrance Foundation. Did you wear any special fragrance in honor of the day? I love that Fragrance Day falls in the same week as the first day of spring in the Northern Hemisphere, that seems so fitting given that my garden and others are bursting with fragrant flowers right now. Also, “Paris Perfume Week” is underway, from March 21-24. How I wish I were there! Maybe next year … anyone care to come? It appears there are many events that non-professionals can attend (with a ticket).
I’m still enjoying my souvenir of Paris, Fragonard’s Narcisse, which was its flower scent of the year in 2023. I chose it because on our recent trip, there were daffodils in bloom everywhere we went, including Versailles. Elena Vosnaki of Fragrantica chose it as one of her favorite fragrances of 2023. My heart still belongs to Ostara, for a true daffodil fragrance, but Narcisse is very pretty. It’s light and fresh, with a lot of citrus in its opening. The picture on the bottle shows Narcissus poeticus, a late-blooming white narcissus with a small, red and yellow ‘eye” in its center, and that is what it smells like as opposed to daffodils. More lemony and less musky. A very nice spring scent! It doesn’t last long but I enjoy it while it does.
We are entering my favorite fragrance season, spring. As regulars here know, I love my floral and green fragrances! Of course I can wear them year-round, but the spring is when I really love wearing them, as they blend seamlessly with the fragrant air outside. RIght now, the smell of fresh flowers inside my house is coming from a bunch of sweet pea blossoms that a friend gave me yesterday. I love them! I’ve tried before to grow them in my garden, without success. I just haven’t mastered the timing, as they hate hot weather. I think I’d have to plant seeds in the fall to have any chance. Meanwhile, their delicate blossoms are scenting an entire room; they don’t even look real.
Do you have any favorite sweet pea fragrances? Caron had one for a long time called Pois de Senteur, which they reformulated and reissued in 2021, but I’ve never smelled it. Last year, Jo Malone had a new fragrance called English Pear and Sweet Pea, so I may have to go try that at a nearby department store. Have you tried it? Thoughts on it?
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 15, and we’re back from Paris! What a wonderful trip we had. It was our first visit back to Paris since our honeymoon, decades ago. Although we’ve been lucky enough to visit other parts of France since then, we hadn’t yet been back to Paris. Early March isn’t the ideal time of year, just because the weather in Paris at that time can be cold and rainy, and we got a bit of both, but less than we had expected during the daytime. We revisited several of Paris’ “greatest hits”, like the Louvre and the Sainte Chapelle, but we also just walked around a lot — and yes, we visited some perfume stores! I had to adjust my list but was more than satisfied with the places we reached, some of which hadn’t been on my list!
View from a boat on the Seine
Some of you probably knew this, but I hadn’t realized that the Marais district now has so many perfumeries! Some are brand-specific, and one lovely stop was an independent perfumery called “Sens Unique”, which one of you had suggested. We stumbled across several that I hadn’t known would be in that area, and couldn’t possibly visit them all.
Sens Unique perfumery
We also visited the Palais Royal, home to both Serge Lutens and Parfums de Rosine. I got a warm welcome at both boutiques — in fact, contrary to Paris’ reputation (which I think is very outdated), we received a warm welcome everywhere we went.
Parfums de Rosine Boutique
As hoped, a few of the Palais Royal’s pink magnolias were starting to bloom, and we saw many daffodils in bloom all over Paris (and at Versailles, where we spent a happy, sunny day). Although we didn’t make it to the Fragonard perfume museum, I did buy a bottle of Fragonard’s Narcisse as a souvenir of our trip. I was very good, though — I bought one travel spray at Parfums de Rosine (Bulle de Rose) and a few discovery sets elsewhere. TBH, I probably would have bought more than one travel spray at Parfums de Rosine, but very few of their fragrances come in that size. I didn’t buy anything at Serge Lutens because 1) I was a bit overwhelmed by the range and variety; and 2) the one that most interested me, De Profundis, was being sold in the “gratte-ciel” bottle, which I don’t like, not in the famous bell jar. They might have been able to find one for me if I had asked, I suppose, but I was also deterred by the high price.
The Palais Royal
The Bon Marché department store currently has an installation throughout its Left Bank store called “Mise en Page”, with displays around the theme of books and reading. This included the ground floor fragrance area, and the display was very charming. I had hoped there might be a special fragrance for the event, but what was on offer were current fragrances from houses like Diptyque, Frederic Malle, and Byredo. Still fun, though!
Mise en Page at Bon Marche
Believe it or not, Paris is about to have its first ever “Paris Perfume Week“, organized by Nez, starting March 21! If this becomes an annual event, which I hope it will, I’ll have to time future visits to Paris accordingly. It is a combination trade show for the industry and showcase for the public, with various programs and lectures that non-professionals can attend. I love the whole idea!
Some of you asked me to comment on food, so here goes! Three of our favorite spots were: La Fontaine de Mars; Les Petits Pois; and Le Quartier Latin. La Fontaine de Mars is a classic French brasserie near the Eiffel Tower, with dishes like duck confit and cassoulet. A signature appetizer of theirs is eggs baked in red wine — OMG, so yummy! Now I want the recipe. Les Petits Pois is a tiny, French modern restaurant near the Jardin des Plantes. Very reasonably priced with very original, high quality food. The dessert I had was hands-down the best I’ve eaten in years: it was basically a stack of chocolate sable cookies, slathered with cream, meringue, and chocolate sauce. Absolutely divine! Le Quartier Latin is actually an Italian restaurant that was a short walk from our hotel on the Left Bank. We went twice, because the food was so good and the host so welcoming. We enjoyed both their pasta and their pizza. Reservations are recommended for all three, and are easier to get if you want to eat when they open at 7 pm. We also had the legendary hot chocolate and Mont Blanc pastry at a branch of Angelina, as a break during our LONG visit to the Louvre. The hot chocolate was truly amazing, and the perfect museum pick-me-up. The Mont Blanc pastry was delicious but oh so sweet and rich! I’m grateful to our server, who told us that we should share one instead of having one each, because of the hefty overload of sugar.
So there you have it — and now I’m back home, working hard in my garden to get everything organized for peak spring bloom time, which is upon us. What fragrant adventures have you enjoyed recently?
Serenity Now Scents and Sensibilities 