Bogue Gardelia

Bogue Gardelia is one of those perfume unicorns. Since I first heard its name floating out there last year as a limited edition and read on Kafkaesque the following small part of her extensive review –   “An opulent, baroque, and complex symphony of notes that deluge the senses, evoking the very best of the vintage chypre style, and so much more as well. Animalic, lush, tropical, floral, vegetal, mossy, resinous, furry, musky, and indolic elements shine in pitch-perfect balance within a prismatic kaleidoscope that clearly nods to Gardoni’s famous MAAI, but also to vintage Mitsouko parfum, albeit a Mitsouko that is given a tuberose and gardenia twist. It’s like stumbling upon an unexpected nook of hot-house flowers growing deep within the recesses of a mossy, dark forest, unfolding like a furry and autumnal twist on the Rite of Spring.”

Yeah, exactly!  Bogue Gardelia was created by Antonio Gardoni in 2016 for Profumeria Sacro Cuore in Bologna as a limited edition of 50 bottles.  Made as a celebration of the store’s 50th anniversary as well as Giovanni and Lia Padovan (owners of the store) 50th anniversary.  Three types of gardenia are in it and make up 6% of this extrait.

If you love big, retro perfumes and especially ones centered around gardenia, you will be super sad to read the first paragraph about the limited edition’ness of this.  But rejoice, it really takes like a drop or less to maximum perfume projection.

I had a hard time figuring out the convection points of this.  I definitely get a huge vintage Mitsouko parfum vibe, but then there is this funkiness that was familiar.  When I went to the Basenotes gathering in Denver, someone mentioned JAR Bolt of Lightning. That’s it!  Vintage Mitsouko parfum and JAR Bolt of Lightning collided with each other as they rounded the corner at Bergdorf’s, and you can’t tell where one starts and the other begins.  It is a joyous salute to everything about big, retro perfumes.  There’s a great civety base, but it’s not overtly animalic, just a nice subtle funk.

My big wish is Bogue would do this in an EDP, but I have a feeling the materials used that make it so pricey would change the character of the perfume completely if they tried that. So I’m just settling in for a while and luxuriating in a feeling of being taken back to a time when you could get you vintage Mitsouko parfum at the counter fresh and in a vat and then having the 21st Century splash down with the weirdly wonderful Bolt of Lightning. It’s amazing. Go and read Kafkaesque’s entire post for a better blow by blow detail of how it develops. Oh, and it last like a year or something.  Once it goes on, it stays on until I shower.

Winner of the Art & Olfaction Award Finalist sample set of what I can round up  – Rachel W. Just click on Drop Us a Note at the top, send me an e-mail, remind me of what you won and get me your mailing address. I’ll send you a quick e-mail to let you know I got your e-mail and it didn’t land in a spam filter and then get it on the way to you.

Today’s drawing is a two-parter.  First, when I left the Basenotes gathering last weekend, they had a box full of samples that they had brought to swap, etc., and these were ones that were left. It’s a lot.  They told me to take them and dispose of them to someone(s), so I’m going to do a drawing here for them! I’ll break the box up into two sets. Drop a comment to be entered.  I’ll include in the grabbox a small sample of Bogue Gardelia too!  I’ll also draw two more names from commenters to win just a smidge of Bogue Gardelia. So when you comment, mention if you are entering for both or just one and which one.  So big, bad Bogue Gardelia, your kind of perfume or no?