Serenity and Spring and Tackling A Classic: Climat by Lancome

It took me about 8 years to appreciate this scent and yet yesterday I had one of those total zen moments when your perfume is exactly what you need for the day and matches the beauty you see in the day. This does not happen often. Climat, I finally get you. I couldn't get you in my mid-twenties and maybe I needed a terrible drought to appreciate you but damn yesterday you were the perfect embodiment of what my heart needed to get through the day.

Climat is an example of family of perfumes that has taken me a very long time to appreciate, a green floral emphasized with aldehydes. This scent smells classic and it is very classic in the sense that it has no sweetness. Climat probably works for me because it does not feature the signature green note that most green perfumes use: galbanum. Yet, there is no mistaking Climat for being anything else than a green floral scent.

Climat is stepping into a cool green spring forest. There are lush green hills, a creek in the background, cool dark damp earth, and lily of the valley and narcissus blooming. Below all that is a warm civet accented musk, on me this is all very clean and warm, but for others I can see this is either where the scent plays nice on you or becomes something else. The beginning of Climat is aldehydes, thankfully not too pungent or nose searing, in fact they are fairly gentle. You then enter a perfect melange of woods, narcissus, and lily of the valley. This melange stays around for quite awhile with the florals slowly leaving, what then enters the dry down is a mossy mix of musk and woods with a good dose of vetiver. It is an incredibly clean and earthy scent, I want to say soapy, but this is not the traditional soapy, this violet earthy soapy, there is a very mineral like quality to the dry down which I attribute to the mix of earthy and clean.

The variation of Climat I am reviewing today is from Lancome's La Collection release from my understanding there is a great deal of variation in the releases of Climat so try with caution. This one is by many considered the best of the recent releases because it is especially close to the original offering.

Try Climat if you like Trefle Pur by Atelier Cologne, Balenciaga Paris by Balenciaga, or Au Dela - Narcisse des Montagnes by Bruno Fazolarri (I actually have a theory that Climat Inspired this scent).

First image from Fragrantica.com
Second image 'Dreaming of Pomegranates' by Felice Casorati

SOTD: Diorissimo

It would be just my luck that after a stressed week of car issues that I would catch a cold, this is no shocker to me. When I get stressed (as happened last week) and then de-stress I usually end up getting sick, this phenomenon has been written about, the most likely to have this problem, college students. And it does happen everytime to me when I get done with a semester I usually end up getting a cold of some sort. Luckly this is a light cold so far.

As for my scent of the day, I am finally testing the mother of lily of the valley/muguet scents, Dior's Diorissimo, this is lovely and thought it would be a nice antidote to today's heat but this fragrance I realize is firmly a just spring scent.

The funny thing about muguet scents is long ago in my middle school years I adored muguet scents. My friends and I would fight over my little bottle of oil, called Rain, wearing the stuff on our movie nights, and thinking of it as the best thing in the world. Now though I rarely wear muguet scents, I think they remind me of an innocence that no longer fits my character, or the over-the-top feelings of adolescence. The strange thing is by the time I hit high school I had stopped wearing muguet scents.

The more I think about it muguet really is the perfect scent of girl beginning to enter womanhood, beautiful a just a little big narcotic with its hint of indoles and musk, but still full of sunlight.

image provided by artnet.com
image: Lily of the Valley by Judith McMillan

Scent of the Day: La Parisienne

So today is the first of May and I am wearing the one scent of mine that has prominent lily of the valley note, La Parisienne. A lovely sparkling way to start off the month.
Quote of the Day: Most modern calendars mar the sweet simplicity of our lives by reminding us that each day that passes is the anniversary of some perfectly uninteresting event.-- Oscar Wilde

image provide by http://jalowiecpartyof7.blogspot.com/

Scent of The Day: La Parisienne

So we are having that weird weather in the Bay Area, where in the middle of Autumn, it looks like spring, like the glorious early part of spring, when green is just beginning to peep through, but there is still a chill in the air. Suddenly I am yearning for the scent of silver, green, and lily of the valley; so I put on La Parisienne, a gorgeous silvery aldehyde scent, that just screams spring.