Goes without saying that it was both hot and humid all weekend, although I must admit not as hot as it was last week. Still, I was looking for something to cut the heat, so on Saturday I decided to try L’Artisan Mandarine Tout Simplement, L’Artisan’s 2006 summer offering with notes of green mandarin, ginger, frangipani, yellow mandarin, red mandarin, and cedarwood. Generally I fear citrus fragrances because they do not react well with my skin, but this was very pretty, orangey sweet and also green. Imagine you are at the park, having a picnic on a hot day and smelling the fresh cut grass, and you peel a juicy orange. That pretty much sums up this scent. Imagine doing that in real time, too, because unfortunately, this scent didn’t last that much longer on my skin. Maybe if I had a full bottle and could be more generous with the amount, it would be better. I don’t think for me this is bottle-worthy, but it does make me more enthusiastic about trying citrus scents.
On Sunday, it was not as warm but super humid, and I decided to sample what everyone’s touting as “the smell of summer,” Bond No. 9 Fire Island. The notes in Fire Island are cardamom, ozone, neroli, white musk, tuberose, musk, and patchouli. Before I get going here, can anyone explain to me how ozone works in a fragrance? I looked at osMoz, Wikipedia, and Bois de Jasmin (wonderful info on notes there), and then tried a general search, but didn’t come up with much of anything. Not to sound dim, but is it simply used as a synthetic note? Does it mimic a marine note?Because there’s a slight marine feel (although not briney or salty) to Fire Island. They’ve bottled a very specific summer olfactory sensation that combines everything from tanning oil to parking lot tarmac. I’m not joking when at one point I thought I must surely be smelling a note of caramelized popcorn. This is not gourmand or floral, and the musk does something wonderful to the tuberose that makes it sort of sandy and wet. Some people have called it beachy, but I think of it more like a boardwalk scent, the mixture of vacation and industry. If this sounds awful, it isn’t. If someone had thought to package this scent and sell it in gift shops in summer vacation spots everywhere, they would have made a killing by now. It would out-sell snow globes in a minute. But it’s very much a perfume, still, and a quite comforting and lovely one at that. I’m smitten!
*photos from Aedes and LusciousCargo
