Eau d'Italie - Au Lac

Watery floral

The PR material from Eau d'Italie tells me that Au Lac was inspired by the early 20th century love affair between Italian Princess Vittoria Colonna and Futurist artist Umberto Boccioni. Part of this affair took place on an island in Lake Maggiore in an Italian garden near the shore. Au Lac is supposed to smell like "A gorgeous Italian garden at the height of summer, the air filled with the scent of flowers and the fresh waters of a lake...", you get the picture.

What does Au Lac smell like? Watery lotus, a hint of palest green, some airy, barely there osmanthus, mineral water and laundry-clean musk.

When I smell Au Lac the country that comes to mind isn't Italy, it's Japan. Specifically, the famous aversion the Japanese have to wearing perfumes that you can actually smell. Chandler Burr has written about this, Display It, don't Spray It,  and a recent article in the Japan Times says the same thing:

The Japanese can tell if someone is wearing perfume from three train cars away, and are quick to wrinkle their noses. It just puts them into a funk. They will likely swear the smell has clung to their nose hairs or taken up residence in their nasal membranes where they will have to inhale the offensive perfume for the rest of the day.

The Japanese cosmetics market is huge, but perfume sales are low - nothing compared to the European and North American markets. So, how does a perfume house make it big in Japan? Make more perfumes that don't smell of very much at all.  Many perfumes bloggers have alluded to this phenomenon, remarking that this or that new sheer, "clean" perfume or "anti-perfume" like L'Eau Serge Lutens, must be for the "japanese market."

I guess there's enough perfume in the world to suit everybody's tastes but, as for me, I'd like a little more "there" there. A little funk for my trunk. Even (horrors) a waft in my wake. I don't want to cause a stampede on the subway but, when I huff my wrist, I want to smell something more than water with petals floating on top.

House: Eau d'Italie
Nose: Alberto Morillas
Notes: Water Lily, Bitter Orange Leaves, Panarea Fig Leaves, Osmanthus, Italic Rose Bud, Sambac Jasmine Petals, Papyrus, Mineral Amber

Photo: Nganguyen

Water lily

Musings from cottage country

For the first time I actually smelled a live water lily. It's remarkably like what I was expecting. I've read that there is no natural water lily extraction or essence in perfume, all water lily accords are created synthetically. 

The live lily is fresh, lightly sweet, a little aquatic and a little lemony. Sort of like the peony but without any rosiness.

On another topic, I just read The Perfect Scent by Chandler Burr, his journalistic look into the perfume industry in New York and Paris, focused around the creation of two perfumes Un Jardin sur le Nil by Hermès and Sarah Jessica Parker, Lovely. I feel changed. Blinders have come off my eyes. I'm sorry for any stupid things I may have said about perfume or the industry. This book explains so much - about the art form, the formulas, the use of synthetics vs. "natural" ingredients and more. I've already written about Un Jardin sur le Nil and now I am going to have to go get a tester of Lovely, and some of the other perfumes discussed in the book. The paperback itself came with a small test strip of Lovely, but maybe it was old, all that was left was base notes, but they were nice basenotes - a woody musk that lingers on the skin.

For all you Canadians, have a great long weekend. This will be my only post, I'm heading back down to the dock.

Photo: mine

The Smell of Summer

There is a town in north Ontario,
With dreams, comfort, memory to spare
And in my mind
I still need a place to go,
All my changes were there.¹

Today was perfect. The kind of warm, sunny day that seems like a gift in Toronto - clear blue sky, no humidity. A perfect day to sit by the pool with a book, walk the dog down in the green grass between Old Fort York and the railway tracks or get some beer and something to BBQ tonight.

I got to thinking about summer and what I would put into a bottle of my perfect scent-of-summer perfume.

It would have to be focused around the smells of northern Ontario of my childhood. The head, heart and base would all revolve around a note of cool, deep green water with sunlight sparkling on top.

The head would include green foliage and the smell of the little orange jewelweed flowers that grow down by a creek. There would be the tang and creaminess of orangecicles and the wood of their dry, licked sticks.

The heart would be the smell of hot grass and clover, and tall queen anne's lace. Add in a touch of dust from the shoulder of a back-country road and some of the orange day lilies growing in the ditch beside it. There would also be a note of wild raspberry and the leaves of the twisted canes that grow beside the road. I can't forget to add the smell of a cedar dock, warmed by the sun but with damp patches shaped like your back. Notes of warm golden skin weave throughout.

As the drydown begins you would smell notes of sticky pine sap on bark, and dry pine needles. There would be a sense of airy space dappled by sunlight slanting low through tall quiet columns of light and shade like a hushed outdoor catherdral. At the base darkness falls and out comes moss and darker woods with a touch of wood smoke. The perfume ends with more of that minerally lake water from a late-night skinny dip.

Is it out there? Can someone make it for me?

¹ Neil Young, Helpless