Salty Marshes and exuberance

*standard disclaimer you can insert here for most of my posts — I do have the scents I’m reviewing in my little sample/decant store, but since I sell hundreds of things, it doesn’t impact whether I love/like a scent, though I’m more prone to buy scents I like/love, oddly enough*

Every now and then you get lucky enough to have some great scents pass your desk on the same day, and you spend the rest of the day wondering whether you should shower, just so you can put them on again and make sure they have the same magic or should be worn just by themselves, but you can’t resist putting on the other one because it’s so darn great too!  I wish I had more days like this.  

Miller Harris Fleurs de Sel — Created by Lyn Harris to evoke her memories of the salt marsh at Batz sur Mer, it has notes of red thyme oil, rosemary, clary sage, wild flowers – iris nobilis, narcisse flowers and rose — ambrette seed, woods, vetiver grass and moss.  Okay, look at that list of notes and tell me how in the world this would ever be a miss for me.  Well, it’s not a miss, it’s a   –I fall at your feet, Lyn Harris, you are brilliant and perfect and made a scent that reflected those things. This shit rocks me to my core.  It is the perfect blend of salt, flowers, little spice and vetiver. If you love Sel de Vetiver or just a salty feel in your perfume, you will be over the moon about this one. I don’t think I’ve ever spent any time in a salt marsh in my life, but now I want to go to Batz sur Mer and smell this in person.  (photo from a Batz sur Mer tourist site).  Currently Saks in NYC only had a couple hundred bottles available as a pre-release. You can call Christina @ 212-940-2072 to see if any are left.  Otherwise, it should be in general release in July — the perfect summer and always scent.

Nasomatto Absinth — No notes are listed for this scent, we are just told that the perfumer, Alessandro, is a very experienced perfumer who “believes that our senses are the primary instruments which generate our instinctive reactions and drive our process of judging and choosing.”  *rolls eyes* No duh.  Absinth’s marketing blurb says, “The fragrance aims to evoke degrees of hysteria. It is the result of a quest to stimulate irresponsible behaviour.”  You guys have been reading me long enough to know that just the above claims were enough to send me into degrees of hysteria. But, WTH, I figure, let’s give the whole line a go and see what we think.  Of course the first one out of the box that I must put on is Absinth.  I’m old enough now, that stimulating irresponsible behavior can be a chore.

When I put Absinth on, I burst into laughter. Not because it stimulated irresponsibility, but because this scent is perfection, like Fleurs de Sel is perfection. Vetiver and some kind of nutty thing, probably a little absinth. They don’t list notes anywhere (boo, hiss!), so I’m on my own. It feels a little salty too.  Lord, I  adore this one with a passion.  I’ll talk about the others later, and I really liked a couple of them a lot, but this one is the clear Triple Crown winner for me. Earthy — check.  Rich — check.  Fun — check.  So help me, I did not want to really like these scents, I fully intended to have them only for my merriment in poking fun at them. This could be for either a man or a woman, there is nothing particularly masculine or feminine, y’all get the chance to fall in love with it.  This is currently only available from First in Fragrance, I believe.

There are times when only a Flannery O’Connor quote will do.  “The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.” Damn that Nasomatto Absinth.

BTW, I won’t be reviewing French Lover. I really like it, but the occasional anosmia I have when I hit certain compounds is in effect in this one.  Starts out love, then I hit the anosmic brick wall and it goes to alcohol. This is a failing of mine, not the perfume, so you’ll have to rely on other people on this one, sorry!