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White Floral

Chypre Review Summer White Floral

Bruno Fazzolari Au Dela

30th June 2015

I felt something give in me when I smelled Bruno Fazzolari Au Dela for the first time. Something about it bypasses the thinking part of my brain and goes straight to the heart. I know that sounds very Barbara Cartland, and I do apologize, but when you smell as many perfumes as I do, you learn not to ignore those rare times that you are moved by a perfume. And Au Delà moves me.

It is partly to do with memory. Loaded with moss, coriander, and neroli, the opening recalls the ‘summer tennis’ fourgeres favored by my father – I am thinking of Eau Sauvage in particular. There is a dry, herbal touch of hay, I imagine, and a whole lifetime of summers unfolds in my mind’s eye. The neroli smells bright and smoky, like singed lemon peel. But the fresh, aromatic start turns out to be a diversion, and while your imagination is busy batting tennis balls, the real cast of notes is moving quietly onto the stage.

Because what Au Delà really is is a white floral. Normally, I can’t stand white florals. To me, they are like a massive slab of Triple Crème Brie left in the heat of the afternoon sun to ooze across the cheese plate – a little bit is nice, but the thought of more leaves me nauseous. Worse than the unchecked richness, for me, is the lack of bone structure. White florals just….collapse… all over your personal space, like a blowsy blonde barfly ten years past her prime.

But what Bruno Fazzolari has achieved with Au Delà is to create a white floral with a backbone and a clear sense of purpose. Although the jasmine and orange blossoms are as honeyed and indolic as you might imagine, they manage to float above the base in a green, crisp haze that satisfies without making you feel sick. The dark, saline amber and moss in the base give it a chypre feel, and bring it within touching distance of the 1950’s revivalist style of 31 Rue Cambon (Chanel), Promesse de L’Aube and Enlevement au Serail (Parfums MDCI). It is every bit as ravishingly beautiful as these perfumes.

However, Au Delà differs from these great ‘new’ chypres by virtue of being more botanical in its focus, and far less abstract – in other words, the jasmine in Au Delà is recognizable as jasmine, the neroli as neroli, and so on. Au Delà also has a warmer, more ‘human’ feel to it than any of the aforementioned perfumes, in large part due to the skin-salt finish of the ambery base. It is an uncluttered perfume with a direct message.

And in its simplicity lies the key to its snappy elegance. One of my favorite quotes from Paul Coehlo is as follows: “Elegance is achieved when all that is superfluous has been discarded and the human being discovers simplicity and concentration: the simpler and more sober the posture, the more beautiful it will be.” This might as well have been written about Au Delà and the perfumer’s intent as anything else in life. A modern floral masterpiece, in my opinion, and joins Une Fleur de Cassie as one of my favorite floral perfumes ever.

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Attars & CPOs The Discard Pile White Floral

Amouage Afrah

29th June 2015

Amouage Afrah smells like a three-way clash between the heavy, fruity, musky aroma of champaca flowers, a licorice-like basil note, and the marine bilge unpleasantness of either ambergris or civet. The opening is heady and almost indolic/stinky with champaca, but the basil gives it a nice ‘black’ salted licorice lift. I give this attar points for originality, though. I have never smelled anything like it, and indeed, it does not smell like any of the other Amouage attars I have tried. It strikes as less oriental and more European in focus, perhaps. I kind of see where they were going with it.

I just find the civety stink of ambergris to not mesh well with the other notes. There is this heavy aroma of someone who doesn’t have very good hygiene, or who simply has produces bad body odor due to some medical condition like glucose over-production. Worse yet, it is specifically the ‘second day’ smell imprint of their body and hair and discarded skins cells that lies about on the sheets of your bed for days after they’ve gone. Not a winner in my book, I’m afraid.

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Scent Memory The Discard Pile White Floral

Acqua di Parma Magnolia Nobile

29th June 2015

Acqua di Parma Magnolia Nobile follows the same pattern set down for Iris Nobile, which is to say: citrus + white flowers + light musk/woods base. Instead of iris, we have magnolia, which in real life smells like bright lemon notes, mixed with sweet whipping cream. In the Balkans, where I live, every yard has one single magnolia tree, planted there as a sign of welcome. Or at least to say “We will pause before taking out the shotgun.”

Magnolia Nobile dials up the citrus notes of the flower, and so the opening positively fizzes with snappy lemon and sweet orange peel. I like the opening a lot – the cream of the magnolia petals needs to be cut somehow, and this does the job. In fact, I wish the uplifting freshness could hang around a little longer. I’m not so keen on the creamy aspect of the flower that forms the heart.

To me, magnolia always smells a little too sweet and soapy. Unfortunately, in this particular example, it reminds me of an Impulse body spray I used when I was 19. Or a hand-soap, or a shampoo – I wish I could recall exactly. Either way, the smell association is there. Magnolia Nobile ends up smelling – to me – like a banal soap or shower gel or body spray that I used to buy in Marks and Spencers on Fridays with the money from my student grant that I hadn’t spent on booze and cigarettes. Boring and juvenile, therefore, to a nose that is at least two decades past that awkward stage.

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Review Summer White Floral

Frederic Malle Carnal Flower

25th June 2015

My sample of Carnal Flower by Les Editions de Parfums Frederic Malle sat in my sample box, unloved and untested, for a whole year. I kind of fear tuberose, you see. It brings back unwelcome associations for me between the sleek, buttery smell of tuberose blooms in vases and rich ladies who lunch in hotels.

I used to work in one such hotel – Kelly’s Hotel in Rosslare Strand (Irish people will know it). Don’t get me wrong – the hotel was, and still is, a great place and the owners are wonderful. But never was I so aware of my lowly socio-economic status as when I stepped through the revolving doors into the tuberose-scented air of that hotel.

Over time, the smell of tuberose became linked in my mind with rich people, carpets so deep your heels sink into them, and the indefinable smell of wealth in the air. My prejudice is wholly my own, of course – it only means that I have an inferiority complex. But I am careful about tuberose because I am only human and don’t want to deliberately trigger those feelings.

I needn’t have worried about Carnal Flower. It’s less of the ‘wealthy hotel air’ smell of hothouse tuberoses and more botanical, earthy, natural in feel – like walking through a swampy field of tuberose stalks. It is a smell rooted in nature and not in something man-made.

The opening notes are luridly green and camphoraceous, and every time I get a mental image of the waxy leaves of a privet hedge and the stalks of the tuberose being crushed and offered to me to smell. The freshness is a surprise, every time, and it moves me. Slightly bitter, sappy, and evergreen, I wish it could last forever; it’s that intoxicating to my senses.

Eventually, the opening dies back and a creamy tuberose is revealed. To my relief, it is not the butter-and-candy disco flower of my worst nightmares (hello Fracas!), but a cool and restrained take on the infamous bloom. It is creamy, yes, but not overblown.

Hints of coconut and white musk round out the floral element. Although I like the opening more, I also quite like this last phase, especially in the heat, because the tuberose and coconut give off a natural, salty beach feel.

Despite the marketing and the name, I don’t find Carnal Flower to be sexy in the slightest. In my opinion, it is simply a tuberose presented in the most botanical, natural way possible. I think Carnal Flower does a brilliant job of showcasing the headiness of the flower as it appears in nature, and not in a hothouse environment, and for that alone, I will always love it. Will I need a whole bottle of it? Nah. But a vial of it to smell every now and then would be nice.

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