After Monday, I wasn’t much in the mood for florals (no offense to the creators of the beautiful Bond No. 9 Chinatown—just stupid user error), but I stuck to the ones I had picked and have had a pretty good run of luck the rest of the week, even though they are all on the flowery side (with the exception of tomorrow’s sample, which is an unusual floral). The notes in Amoureuse are as follows: tangerine, cardamom, tuberose, jasmine, ginger lily, cedar moss, sandalwood, and honey. LusciousCargo describes this fragrance as “floral and green.” Floral, I get, but to me this has not one trace of green. In fact—how do I describe this?—to me, Amoureuse signifies Perfume.
What I mean is that when I think “Perfume with a capital “P,” the idea of a scent like this is what comes into my head. (I think everyone has an idea of this smell, even more so beginners like me, because we aren’t yet trained to distinguish notes, and we also haven’t been exposed to much.) The tangerine and cardamom temper the tuberose in the opening. The tangerine fades rather quickly, but after that the tuberose never takes over the way it does in many perfumes. Usually it seems to be the star, but this is an ensemble cast, and it works seamlessly together, which means I could wear it any time of year. After wearing it all day (it has nice lasting power…it’s 5:00 now, and I applied this around 8:00 A.M.), I smell something that’s woody and sweet, with a hint of jasmine. Lovely.
Another fragrance I think of as “Perfume with a capital P” is Rancé Josephine. The two fragrances smell nothing alike, but to me the notes meld in much the same way.
And on a Bob note: So far, this weeks winner is Pecksniff’s Green Chypre. He liked the Chevrefeuille, which he pronounced “delicate and very pretty,” but then he also said it smelled like corn tortillas. Huh? This from the man who picked the rose note out of L’Ombre dans L’Eau while I was still thinking I smelled grapefruit rind. Chinatown, he said he liked but that it wasn’t “me.” This morning he said he liked the Amoureuse, that it was “better, but not as much as the other one,” and when pressed said he didn’t know what “better” meant, but he liked the Chypre the best. It’ll be interesting to see what he thinks of it now!
Read a review of this fragrance at Bois de Jasmin.
*photo from LusciousCargo
