Like a Virgin

by Musette

The notion of degrees of virginity has always mystified me – imo,  you either are or you aren’t although apparently I am Jurassic  on that one.  I get a giggle with olive oil descriptors, too, imagining that the olives in extra virgin olive oil aren’t even touched by human hands (or other parts)! let alone relieved of their oil.  Instead the Archangel Olive  comes down and poof! The Immaculate Pressing.  Yeah, I know…but it is funny.  Oh, c’mon…

So I was disappointed when I met with The Different Company’s Pure Virgin.   I was hoping for a way more interesting name (or at least an olive note).   Celine Ellena is supposedly leaving the company and this is her swan song.  It’s such a departure from the line’s original trend that, at first, I thought she might’ve been mad at them – the equivalent of my friend peeing in her husband’s Aramis when she found out he’d cheated on her.  Then I got a little scrab of de Bachmakov  which to me feels totally different from the early scents so I started rethinking the motivation for PV.  Perhaps deBachmakov signals a different direction for the House and Pure Virgin is simply the next step.  March and I discussed the early scents – Rose Poivree is magnificent, smelling like (according to March) butt (she’s right).  Sublime Balkiss took the fresh/fruity genre and crunched it up with that marine note, like blackberries packed in kosher salt with a touch of vinegar.  Charmes and Leaves hews to the silver/green motif, combining the bracing freshness of mint with that greeny/slimy galbanum thing – all of those are a bit weird and definitely not for everybody but there’s no mistaking  the spare elegance that I equate with The Different Company.

Pure Virgin?  No weird or strange going on there.  It’s a pretty, sweet, powdery scent, like a sugared-up vintage 22.  It’s selling briskly, much to the delight of those SAs who make their living selling perfume and probably have to hump to sell some of the other, stranger offerings (and can you blame them?).  Notes are: Evanescent Musc, Light Wind, Linen Flower,White Rose Cedarwood, Calisson

alrighty!  we’re going to stomp right on past the “Light Wind’, eyes averted, and head straight to Calisson. According to Wikipedia Calissons are a traditional French candy consisting of a smooth, pale yellow, homogeneous paste of candied fruit (especially melons and oranges) and ground almonds topped with a thin layer of royal icing. Calissons have a texture not unlike that of marzipan, but with a fruitier, distinctly melon-like flavor.

And you know what?  That’s Pure Virgin in a candy-coated nutshell!   It has a pale yellow-white feel to it, like sunshine through dotted swiss curtains. I don’t get much melon but I do get the crystalline sweetness of powdered sugar.   I was going to snark on it because it’s not all complicated and philosophical but it’s not supposed to be.  It’s a powdery, sweet, skin scent done well.  I’m just surprised it’s come out of The Different Company.   I would classify it as a less terrifying Teinte de Neige.  And impure virgins can wear it, too!  Just not this impure virgin.

So…have any of you tried this?  What’s your opinion of powdery scents?  I like mine to have a whiff of rotting meat, myself.  Others go the route of the funnel cake.  What say you?

I spritzed this at Barneys where, after 3 days of sniffage, they were heartily sick of me!