Parfums de Marly Oriana Review

Parfums de Marly Oriana was just released a week or so ago.  Hot pink bottle, just a bit more girlie looking than Delina, and buzz on the street was it was a Kilian Love Don’t Be Shy close relative.

Hot pink bottles are tough to resist for me.  First, if anyone is looking for some cheap alternative to Kilian LDBS, Parfums de Marly is not the place to look.  $320 for 75 mls is not a bargain when compared to the (from my memory) 190 or so for a Kilian Love Don’t be Shy 50 ml refill.  Same money ballpark.

Notes of mandarin, bergamot, grapefruit, orange blossom, blackcurrant, raspberry, marshmallow, ambrette, Chantilly cream and musk.

[ peering over my glasses ]  Welp, they look pretty close on a few notes! Someone mentioned Memo Sintra as being related as well. I haven’t smelled that?  Anyone care to comment?

Parfums de Marly Oriana has a description of “mille-feuille of flaky sweetness, softness and sensuality.”  So far, based just on notes and description, unless you are not a gourmand fan in the slightest, there isn’t anything to hate.  I sprayed Oriana on one wrist and Kilian Love DBS on the other, just to see how they started and how they went.  There are tussles on Fragrantica about how similar they are, and on the open, they start out pretty close.  Oriana has a blast of grapefruit and raspberry that adds an open tartness that is different.

After the open, they keep rolling, like rivers traversing the same terrain, but side by side and diverging in some places, but almost touching each other in other places.  Kilian LDBS is a more musky marshmallow orange blossom.  Parfums de Marly Oriana is a little more citrusy marshmallow cream with a dash of orange blossom.  Oriana is sunnier, Kilian LDBS is more sensual.  Marshmallow is the place they stay the same.

Parfums de Marly Oriana is that gourmet marshmallow treat you get at the high-priced fancy confectionary, and they serve it with sunshine and smiles as you plop into your pink marshmallow warmed puffy cloud.

Yeah, I liked it a lot. If you wanted your Kilian LDBS a little less sweetly yearning  and a little more happily in love, Parfums de Marly Oriana could fix you up pretty nicely.

That cheesy hot pink bottle with the little hot pink tassels is just the little hot pink cherry on top!  It’s like a little fan dancer bottle.  So don’t think they are the same, they are not. They belong in the same family, but after the open, they take different paths and wind up in different places.

So will give away two samples of Parfums de Marly Oriana. Just drop a comment to be entered!

It is fall release time!  I’m still on the hunt for that new Unum Reliqua thing. I think a bottle is on its way to me from Italy, but I really can’t be sure.  Here is a little bit from Sorcinelli you can discuss in comments –

“Reliqvia speaks of the walls covered in gilded wood, finely decorated with carvings and reliefs, speaks of the incensed steps towards the great high altar, like a golden embroidery, where the statue of the dead Christ is kept inside it, a wooden work of the seventeenth century and visible only once a year. But he also wants to frame in a synaesthetic way the altarpiece made by Federico Barocci, “the Transport of Christ to the sepulcher” , one of the most beautiful works by the painter from Urbino executed in 1582, and for which he also designed the frame.

Reliqvia is a place where to meet and where to re-evoke memories, to remind the time that passes and which becomes “solemn and authentic gold”, a message of corruptibility and incorruptibility.

“Reliqvia is the tangible trace, the last trace, to describe in life a different and prodigious existence above us. It is the wardrobe always closed, the precious custody of sacred men that makes us understand that time is precious and that it risks being consumed without letting us leave a clear mark in life.

“Reliqvia is the nail of the Passion, layered and peaty incense from the solemn and sacred years.
There is no sacred, if men do not recognize the sacred, and exalt it in perfect rites.
“Reliqvia is the perfect sacred space.

“Touching the relics, touching something that has been in contact with them is a grace and a guarantee: for this reason the Romans tore the veils that had covered the holy martyrs and in which the corpses of the popes were wrapped. This is why the popes were precisely wrapped in those veils.
In front of the relics the fools are healed, the possessed and the obsessed liberated, the blind find their sight, the lame start walking again …

Notes of patchouli, incense, cashmere wood, Guaiac, sandalwood, orange blossom, Scots Pine, Cloves, lentisk, Amyris, elemi, sweet orange, black, currant, nutmeg, smoke, tobacco leaves.  Nothing like a fragrance centered around incense and the mysteries of history and faith to make my heart beat fast.

Here is the commercial for it –