I recently changed jobs, which requires two six-hour daily commutes per week, meaning I start off in the cold darkness and return under the same conditions at night. Though I know that this too will pass – and there will be, eventually, light – it is difficult to keep my spirits from flagging. What I need right now are perfumes that perform the same trick for me as natural light. And these are six of the best.
Azemour les Orangers (Parfum d’Empire)
Freshly plucked and peeled oranges, pith and all, mingling with the woody, lichen-y scent of the orange grove from whence it came. This is my second bottle and I notice that the slightly body-odor-ish warmth of the cumin has been scrubbed out, hence also the impression it once created of some of the orange picker’s undershirt being included in the overall bubble.
But this is still the most wonderfully tart and naturalistic orange note available in perfumery. I love that the piquancy of the orange is peel-like rather than OJ adjacent, which of course adds to the chypre-like feel of the scent. It is made even more brilliant by the contrast with the greyish, almost ashen lichen or moss notes in the base.
Azemour les Orangers smells dark green and orange to me, the saturated, jewel-like colors of an oil painting. It is this glowing, oleaginous quality that sets it out as special in the citrus genre, especially when compared to the equally beautiful but much more transparent Hermes Eau d’Orange Verte and the Concentre d’Orange Verte. I tend to wear it most in winter, when I need a vitamin C shot to the arm that will see me through the gloom of an entire day without petering off into nothing or losing any of its naturalness of feel.
Too many citrus perfumes rely on brash woody ambers to carry the song once the volatile citrus oils have fizzed out, but not Azemour. Over time, the cigarette ashiness of the base pushes forward a bit to compensate for the slow pulling back of the freshly peeled orange note, but the fact that I still smell the orange there, lingering in the murk eight hours after applying it, makes me inordinately happy.
Paris-Deauville (Chanel)
Paris-Deauville saved my life when I lived in Rome in a historic apartment building that didn’t allow air conditioning. Arriving back from work, I would open the fridge and spray this all over my arms and legs, which were by then coated with a sheen of moisture that never failed to astound me, as a girl from a country with very little humidity, let alone heat.
Oh, it felt glorious! One of the most natural citrus notes I have ever smelled (pink grapefruit to my nose), rubbery green basil, what smells like fig leaf, some Chanel white musks, and a polite, sanitized patchouli bringing up the rear. For a brief moment, before the scent becomes ‘perfumey’ in that typical Chanel manner, it feels like sticking your face into a basket of freshly cut citrus fruits nestled between huge bunch of wet, crisp herbs.
Back in Ireland, I sense a familial connection – however faint – with Coco Mademoiselle, which makes it feel a little less special. I realize that what I loved about Paris-Deauville in Rome was its very un-Chanel-like garden freshness, albeit one delivered to me in a Chanel-quality casing. In colder weather, sadly, the perfumeyness of the Chanel musks swells to fill the space, masking those juicy, uber-naturalistic herbs and citruses that explode out of the bottle under heat conditions. In other words, while Paris-Deauville remains one of my favorite herbaceous citrus perfumes, it earns that position mostly on the back of its enormous service to me during a ridiculously sweaty time of my life rather than its utility to me now.
Cologne Blanche (Dior)
Unlike traditional, citrus-based eau de colognes, which tend to smell very samey to me, Cologne Blanche stakes a claim for the idea that that bright, shiny freshness can be created through other means. Though it does feature some citrus notes, the impression here is of a cloud of powdered almond granita – slightly bitter with rosemary, unsweet, and so cold it feels like it would hurt if you inhale it. It is crystalline and dry ice-like in parts, with a timbre that skirts dangerously close to baby powder at times.
I count myself lucky to have a 50ml decant of the original version, as I understand that it has been made less weird and more of a traditional citrus-amber cologne recently by Francis Kurkdjian. To me, the icy almondine musks make Cologne Blanche feel fresh in a new way, though technically I suppose scents like the Infusion d’Amande and L’Eau d’Hiver create a similar effect. I love the slight bitterness to the powder element in each case, but Cologne Blanche is, for me, best in class.
Bal d’Afrique (Byredo)
Bal d’Afrique was an obsession all through the summer of 2017, and I remain very fond of it. It is basically a sparkly, sunlit version of Vetiver Tonka, made all giggly with forest fruit, violets, and lemon. Some describe it as musky, cedary violets, some as a creamy lemon scent, and some as a fruity, nutty vetiver.
And truth be told, it’s all of those things, and more. Nothing about Bal D’Afrique stands out and that feels like a deliberate decision. Nudged more firmly in one direction or another, it could be pegged more definitively as a vetiver fragrance, a woody violet, a fruity floral, even a foodie amber. But Bal D’Afrique contains a touch of everything and doesn’t press down too hard on any particular pedal, so it ends up playing like a low-key medley of tunes you hear in a cocktail lounge – wonderfully pleasing but sparkling at a low enough wattage so as not to distract from conversation.
Philosykos (Diptyque)
These days, I own the EDP, which is greener and woodier than the fruity EDT. The point is essentially the same, though – Philosykos is the whole fig tree in a bottle, leaf, sap, and fruit and all. It is an intensely naturalistic, evocative, vivid fragrance, and one that pushes the fig narrative with single-minded agression. It reminds me of sitting under my mother-in-law’s massive fig tree on the small homestead she owns overlooking Skadar Lake, straddling Montenegro and Albania. Spraying this scent transports me back there immediately. Always a happy experience, therefore, albeit one tinged with a bit of nostalgia for the Mediterranean, which I find becomes especially acute in the depths of an Irish winter.
Un Jardin en Méditerranée (Hermès)
Less single-minded in its pursuit of the Full Fig experience than Philosykos, Un Jardin en Méditerranée situates its fig (and fig leaf) accord in the context of a garden, so you smell the bright-watery-green notes of a fig that is growing alongside other things – a shrubby oleander (fragrant but coarse, broad), sappy woods, and the crunchy, aqueous stems of other plants. My bottle has darkened with time, taking on a brackish jasmine tea note note that I think adds greatly to its charm.
While no masterpiece, it remains a nostalgic favourite of mine for two reasons. First, it is the perfume that, upon smelling it at an airport, opened my eyes to the existence of a vast world of perfume possibility beyond the Bvlgari and Burberry perfumes I had worn for most of my life to date.
Second, my father, who is a real Hermes fan, brought this over to Rome on what I now see was a humanitarian mission to save me from myself during my first incredibly bleak month living away from my husband and two (then) very small kids. It was January, it was cold and dark, and I was, I think, quite depressed. Over the course of a weekend, the man brought me a cafetiere, gave me his woolly hat to tide me over until I could buy my own, and when I enthused to him about what the perfume he had brought with him – Un Jardin en Méditerranée – had once meant to me, he sneakily left me his bottle on the bathroom shelf, letting me come across it myself after I’d dropped him at the train station. That’s why, though I don’t wear it all that much anymore, it has come to be much more than a perfume to me, rather a symbol of a Dad who, despite his faults as a father (and mine as a daughter), always came through for his child when they were in distress.
Source of Samples: My own bottles or decants, which, with the exception of the Un Jardin bottle gifted to me by my father, I purchased myself.
Cover Image: Photo by Ray Hennessy on Unsplash
