Singing on the Surface of the Sun

Posse!  Let’s talk about the heat!  Surface of the Sun-level heat.  I’m sitting here, in 96F temps.  I have not yet melted in a puddle of goo.  Of course, I’m not moving around much and I’m drinking copious amounts of cucumber ice water & hot peppermint tea.

embracing. In SPF50

And I’m conducting an experiment, wearing an unexpected Amouage in this astounding heat.  Wanna hear about it?  Okay!

Let’s start with the first time I learned of Amouage – this was … a decade ago? Maybe longer, back when Nordstrom still had the lovely pale blue Perfume Room at the Michigan Avenue store.  Mohammed (my SA back then) told me all about the line but didn’t have testers… so.. but what I did remember was the concept of perfumes that would stand up to the astounding Middle East temperatures.  I didn’t purchase anything because how on earth could I? I didn’t know what they smelled like!

But I kept that concept in the back of my brain.

Later, when I first sniffed Lyric (at Bergdorf) the cool-waxy rose seemed antithetical to that concept, so I disregarded it as a hot weather perfume and concentrated on the attars which, as we all know, bloom in extreme heat.  I kept Lyric for cooler weather, where it performs just fine.

Except ‘just fine’ did Lyric a serious injustice.

So.  It’s 96F.  I decided to try Lyric in this heat (luckily we are not approaching the extreme heat of the Middle East, though I don’t know what the difference is – I mean, really?  What is the difference between 96F and 106F?  Hot is HOT!   – anyhoo, I showered with the soap, greased-up with the body cream… and finished off with the perfume (in the blood-red bottle)

(WP ate my draft, so I’m going to try to wing the rest of this post.  Bear with me)

Okay – Lyric is the glorious result of then-Creative Director Christopher Chong’s deep and abiding love of opera.  Created with perfumer Daniel Maurel it is said to be a ‘spinto-lyric’ perfume, slightly darker than a lyric soprano – and that description fits Lyric perfectly.  Imagine a gorgeous carpet or tapestry, with glorious pink and red roses, shot through with gold… all atop a lush, verdant background of deep greens and loamy blacks.  That, in essence, is what I get from Lyric.

The heat?  Welp!  Lyric ate the heat’s LUNCH!  I don’t know what I was thinking when I feared Lyric would get swallowed up in the triple digit feels.  Heh.  It’s almost as if it was just… waiting.. for the extreme heat (and humidity – don’t forget the humidity) to burst into full bloom.  That waxy note (which is what I feared might get eaten) … it’s the frankincense (at least it is to my nose) and is transformed from intriguing crystals (which is what I get when I wear it in cooler weather) to a shimmering liquid, like lava that doesn’t burn, yet retains its luminosity.  It doesn’t quite become the star (Rose is not having that, as you might imagine) but … I dunno… it’s this oddly compelling hot wax smell.  The creme is simply astounding in the heat, mixing with my own skin chemistry to become almost a part of me – it doesn’t so much sit on the skin as it melds with it, retaining the essence of Lyric but evolving into a discrete entity.  Unlike the perfume (edp) I suspect Lyric Body Creme smells completely different on individual skins.  All gorgeous, though.  And totally able to support the perfume.  In fact, in extreme heat you don’t really need all that much of the perfume – a little dab’ll… well, you know ;-).  It holds its own in any weather but there is no sliding around in this heat – it sticks the landing and you can smell it hours after application, just humming away.

This was the character I envisioned when I began this post – Lyric soprano (Inva Mula)Maiwenn Le Besco’s portrayal of the Diva Pavalaguna in ‘The Fifth Element’.   That blue of her skin?  That’s the frankincense – at least it is in my skittery little mind.  Her voice is the soaring beauty of a hot Summer’s day.  The blue?  That’s the reminder of the inexorable slide into Winter – not. quite. there.  Not yet.  But. And as there is no light without darkness, both have a place and a beauty all their own – but that beauty is amplified exponentially when they are paired.

Maiwenn Fifth Element

I would apologize to Lyric for my presumptions… but that diva doesn’t need my apologies.  She knows precisely who She is – and she is glorious!  Try her in 90F (or beyond) – she gets even more glorious, as she was always meant to do.

Surrender to Chance has both the edp and the extrait on offer.  I’m going to order the extrait and see if I can explode the sun!

  • grizzlesnort says:

    Now THAT is a perfume review!

  • ElizaC says:

    In the summer, I will make a point of putting on DelRae Amoureuse before I get into our toaster oven car. The perfumes just explodes in a wonderful way!

  • Kathleen says:

    Lyric, Fate, and the original Gold are my favorites. I’ve considered both winter fragrances, how short-sighted of me! I will wear Lyric this weekend in the hot weather, eager to experience your description! I have the edp, now thinking about the extrait!
    I wore Amouage Lilac all of last week, powdery lovely summer scent.

  • March says:

    Ahhhhh, the glories of the right perfume in really hot weather! That bloom on the skin … I must have tried Lyric at some point, and it … wasn’t precisely my thing, I don’t think? But I bet you smelled fantastic!

  • Eldarwen22 says:

    I adore Lyric in hot weather, it just sings. Epic and Memoir are excellent in hot weather too.

    • Musette says:

      Epic scares the living daylights out of me. I have the shower gel and body lotion and, after application, you can smell it throughout the house for DAYS!

      xoxo

  • cinnamon says:

    Decades ago it got up to 112 degrees in NYC and I actually had stuff to do. So I walked around in it. It was hot but not unbearable. In 2018, we did a week in NYC and the temp for most of the time was around 95 and humid. It.Was.Horrible. Not sure what had changed so much except maybe affects of climate change or that I’m older. Anyway, I have yet to meet an Amouage that is love and somehow I think this is a lack on my part. Needs to be remedied next trip to London.

  • Tom says:

    I live lyric- but haven’t fallen for a full bottle. It’s kind of hot here too, but I will whine about that in tomorrow’s post.

  • Jennifer S says:

    I have a couple of samples of Lyric around here somewhere. One that I intentionally ordered and one when I didn’t remember that I had already intentionally ordered it. Lol! Now that summer in the northeast is just about here, heat wise, I’m going to see what happens!

  • Portia says:

    YAY for Amouage in the heat. I love Ubar for desert weather.
    So many Amouage DCs in Oz. All the bath & body gone and quite a few of the range. Allegedly: Seems losing their top peeps didn’t work out as well as expected. All production going back to Oman.
    Big changes.

    • Musette says:

      the new offerings are good – but not Chong-level. Though I quite like Saffron Mamba. I didn’t realize they’d moved production OUT of Oman – on Insta (lately) they’ve made a huge deal about Omani production, so maybe they’re trying to reestablish that link? It’s certainly a valuable one, to be sure.

      xoxo

      xoxoxo

  • Dina C. says:

    Anita,
    What a glorious review! I love the idea of Lyric being like a lyric soprano, and your choice of Pavalaguna in “The Fifth Element” is so right on the money. (Such a fun, colorful movie. You all know that Jean-Paul Gaultier did the costumes, right??) I think I sampled this a dozen years ago. Need to revisit it!

    • Musette says:

      Thank you! I had fun with this review!
      And I did know that J-PG did the costumes – they are so ‘him’~

      Please do revisit it. Wear on a temperate day, then wear again on a scorcher, see what you think!

      xoxoxo

  • alityke says:

    I probably missed the annual UK hot days I could have trialed this in last week. Beggaration! I love me some Lyric but never tried the bath & body stuff.
    Got major family stuff going off & visiting the hospital daily, so not really wearing anything but colognes at present. Too intrusive.

  • Maya says:

    I discovered last week what surface of the sun heat is like. I’m surprised we all didn’t melt. It never occurred to me to try Lyric in the summer either but I will now!

  • Maggiecat says:

    Ooh. We had a cold front come through north Texas and it only got up to 90 today, but I’ll definitely try Lyric in a couple of days when we get back near 100!