As the weather cools in Toronto but we still have sunny days, I like to wear florals, especially big white florals. The kind of happy girly perfumes that I don't want in the winter, but are also too much for the stickier days of summer. Amoureuse seemed made to fit the bill: a big, feminine white floral with tuberose and jasmine.
Amoureuse starts with a juicy tangerine note and honey that is more animalic than sweet. The oakmoss helps to tone down the sweetness as well, giving the perfume a vintage feel. And that's pretty much what I was going to write about, big florals... indolic... honey dripping... va va va voom and tra-la-la.
But the more I wore Amoureuse, the more I started to think that this is not the southern belle, like Peche Cardinal, that I was expecting. Amoureuse beckons to me with dark eyes from a different country - India.
Tuberose and jasmine are both prominent flowers in India but the note in Amoureuse that ties it all together is cardamon. Intensely aromatic, cool somehow and almost minty, the cardamon in Amoureuse lifts this perfume out of the banal. It add a greeness to the perfume that, along with the lily, makes me think of lily of the valley leaves - their shape and colour, which is also the shape and colour of the cardamon pods. The cardamon tones down the sweetness of tuberose, to a level that I appreciate. Add a base of sandalwood and you have your whirlwind olfactory tour of India.
The far dry down, 16 hours later, is mostly that animalic honey. A well done "modern" chypre.
House: Parfums DelRae
Nose: Michel Roudnitska
Notes: tangerine, cardamon, french tuberose, french jasmine, tahitian lily, oakmoss, sandalwood, honey
Photo: Michael Foley Photography
