L'Artisan Fleur De Narcisse

It seems I am almost the last to review this one; if you haven't already, please check out the excellent reviews by Marina, Marlen and both Patty and March at Perfume Posse.

The very first moments are the only ones that smell to me like living plant: there is an initial peppery, greenish tickle. My husband claims this phase smells like the inside of a milkweed pod - the milky sap, the down, the seeds - and he is usually good at these comparisons, but I have not smelled any milkweed in many a year, so I can't comment. The blackcurrant bud lends a little sweetness to the top and heart notes of the composition, which is nicely countered by the occasional waft of spicy green hyacinth. There is a touch of soap-scrubbed skin. Mostly, however, there is the scent of leather, hay and smoke. The leather is oily, like well-conditioned tack. Hay is one of my favourite notes, with its balance between rich sweetness - almost floral, like good pastry - and mustiness or dry rot. Here, these two "stable" notes (haha) are overlaid with a very airy smoke. As March writes, it is "distant, like a chimney a half a mile away", a very atmospheric smoke.

The scent overall, actually, conveys distance and atmosphere; it is a perfume with is its own weather system. Fleur de Narcisse is like a taking a deep breath of country field air as you zip by in your car with the windows down. It reminds me of the scene in E.B. White's Charlotte's Web where Avery and Fern (wonderful, capable Fern!) are jumping from the Zuckerman hay loft with a swing made from a knotted rope and flying dizzily in and out of the buzzing summer air. It is a lovely scene that brings back the giddiness of being outside as a child, the smell of warm breezes, fresh-picked berries, baked dirt, rope and very purposeful leisure. For all that, I have no remorse that I can't afford Fleur de Narcisse. It is precisely the sort of scent that blooms magnificently on me, and it certainly suits me better than the wistful, dainty beauty of Fleur D'Oranger. Somehow, though, it does not hook me the same way, say, Nicolai Pour Homme does (more on this later...) I shall leave it to those with deeper pockets and keener senses of nostalgia for those sunburnt days. (I was a nerdy, indoorsy sort of child.)