Estée Lauder - Bronze Goddess

The first day of summer

Estée Lauder's Bronze Goddess is being billed as a limited release for 2011 but it has a longer history. It was first released as a body oil under the name Azure Soleil in 2006, as part of the Tom Ford for Estée Lauder collection and re-released as a perfume in 2007 called Azure Soleil Eau Fresh. By 2008, Tom Ford had created his own perfume line and Estee Lauder changed the name of Azure Soleil to Bronze Goddess but kept the formula nearly the same.

If you would like to feel and smell like you've been to the beach, but don't have time to get away, Bronze Goddess is the perfume for you. It starts with a summery squeeze of citrus but becomes a creamy, coconutty floral with a warm salty edge.

To me it smells just like expensive french sunblock - I have a tube of 50+ Vichy at home and it has the same "creamy rich flowers and coconut" smell. Underneath, salty amber base notes mimic the smell of warm skin just out of the ocean being dried on a white sand beach.

It's gorgeous, but I admit that after wearing it a few hours, I sometimes feel the need to go shower and clean up before dinner, the way I would do on holiday at a beach resort.  But keep this one around for the cold days of winter, and it will make you feel the sand between your toes again.

A new flanker, Bronze Goddess Soleil, was released this summer. It's very different from the original. Bronze Goddess Soleil starts with a stronger citrus notes - I smelled grapefruit. As it warms up, it becomes a fresh greenish floral that's predominantly lily and jasmine to my nose. It dries down to a light musky and wood base. The only thing that ties the two perfumes together in my mind is that Bronze Goddess Soleil seems to retain a little of that warm skin character underneath its florals, the way that Bronze Goddess does.

While I liked Bronze Goddess Soleil at first, I got a little bored with it after a while. I still prefer the original for it's unique and almost perfect simulacrum of beachiness.

For other great beach perfumes, try Parfumerie Generale Bois Naufragé or Creed Virgin Island Water, both big favourites of mine.

House: Estée Lauder
Nose: ?

Bronze Goddess Notes: coconut milk, sandalwood, vanilla, vetiver, myrrh, amber, mandarin, bergamot, lemon, orange, tiare flower, jasmine, magnolia, orange blossom and lavender.

Bronze Goddess Soleil Notes: citron, bergamot, tangerine, lavender, petitgrain, pittosporum, neroli, orange blossom, jasmine sambac, grapefruit tree blossom, pink lily, blonde woods, iris, ambrette seed and crystalline musks.

Montale - Intense Tiaré

Monoi and suntan lotion

Montale is a niche Perfume line founded by Pierre Montale in 2003. It's mission is to create high quality, unisex fragrances from natural materials. Fragrantica lists 69 fragrances created by Pierre Montale, from 2008 to 2010. That's one busy nose.

Montale perfumes are generally focused on scents from the "Orient and Arabia" with ingredients like oud and frankincense. Intense Tiaré, however, is a perfume from the other side of the world, the Pacific Islands.

When I stayed in Bora Bora, I discovered the local Tahitian monoi oil, an infusion made from soaking tiaré flowers in coconut oil. I used it as a moisturizer, perfume and bath oil. Intense Tiaré reminds me of that time - it smells like monoi and suntan lotion. There's a creamy sweetness, probably from the vanilla and coconut milk, and a soapiness that may be from the rose.

After many hours the only thing left on my skin is a touch of sweet vanilla. Just like in Bora Bora, where they would bring to you cold towels, scented with local vanilla extract, as you lay sun-bathing around the pool.

Intense Tiaré has fair sillage. Stuck inside on a rainy afternoon in Northern Ontario, my companions say I smell like a tropical vacation. That's not a bad way to smell.

House: Montale
Nose: Pierre Montale
Notes: Tiaré. vanilla absolute, jasmine powder, coconut milk, ylang-ylang roses.

Photo: jsmoral

Ormonde Jayne - Tiare

A lush tropical flower blooms in a classic chypre structure

Tiare, by Ormonde Jayne, is my "desert island" perfume. By that, I mean that if I had to take only one bottle of perfume with me to a deserted island, I would choose my bottle of Tiare.

I spent my honeymoon in Bora Bora in French Polynesia - a beautiful volcanic island with a hallucinogenically perfect lagoon. The tiare flower is the national flower of French Polynesia and related to the gardenia. Visitors to Bora Bora are greeted with chains of tiare flowers and each evening the bed in our bungalow was perfumed with scattered tiare flowers. Tiare is the perfume I often choose to sleep in - the one which gives me good dreams.

Funny thing, even though Tiare, the perfume, features the native Polynesian tiare flower, the fragrance actually smells nothing like what one would imagine a "South Pacific" perfume would smell like. There's no coconut, no vanilla, no sparkling ocean, nothing in the perfume to evoke the place the flower came from. Instead, creator Linda Pilkington chose to take the precious tiare oil she sourced for the perfume and put it into a composition that highlights the lush flower itself and pays tribute to the classic chypre stucture of perfumery.

A chypre is a perfume that begins with citrus notes, ends with a mossy/woody/musky base and usually has some kind of florals in the middle. This family of perfumes is named for the original Coty, Chypre from 1917. The moss in the base is particularly important, lending it a certain bitterness that is divine. Recent  and controversial restrictions on the use of oak moss and other tree mosses by the International Fragrance Association (IFRA) have caused some classic chypre perfumes to be reformulated, much to the distress of perfume fanatics. Somehow, Linda Pilkington has managed to retain that true bitter, wonderful mossiness in Tiare and, as I mentioned in my Woman review, she says she will never reformulate. Thank goodness.

Tiare begins with fresh citrus notes that really lift the perfume. I often get compliments on it in this top phase. Tiare is not a "linear" perfume, it has a progression through different phases of its structure, but all the main elements are there from the beginning. The rich, waxy-petaled tiare, smelling like gardenia and the moss are there behind the citrus at the top but they also take turns at centre stage later, each in their own time. After the citrus fades the tiare/gardenia shines, white and narcotic against a deep green smell, just like the real flower does against its own foliage. The drydown is my favourite part, the moss and wood last forever on my skin and keep me coming back to snuffle my wrist again and again.

I have one, teensy confession though. It pains me to admit this about a perfume I love, but I think I may be anosmic to one of the musks used in Tiare. There is one point in middle of the perfume's progression that I get the feeling I am smelling a hole, a gap, an absence through the middle of the perfume, around which the gardenia seems to peep. It's a strange sensation that goes away later but, nevertheless, Tiare is still my "if I could only have one" perfume.

House: Ormonde Jayne
Nose: Linda Pilkington
Notes:
Top: Mandarin, orange flower and sicilian lime
Heart: Tiare, freesia, water lilies, jasmine, orris and ylang
Base: Cedar, vetiver, sandalwood, patchouli, moss and musk


Photo: troymckaskle