Une Fleur en Mai

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.
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.