Gardenia perfume – Strange Invisible Perfumes

Smelling it in the first ten minutes, I was verklempt – it´s one of those rare perfumes that make me cry.  Malle En Passant and Serge Lutens´ Encens et Lavande have the same effect on me, and Teo Cabanel Julia did a little bit, too.  En Passant is wistful;   EetL is exquisitely mournful, like a rainfall in a cathedral graveyard in the spring.  Julia is innocence of youth at the moment before it becomes knowing.  Strange Invisible Perfumes Lady Day is sensual and celebratory and heartbreakingly sad.  Lord, I do go on, don’t I? Hand me a Kleenex.e to call and ask.  It´s the gardenia perfume.  Patty said the notes are lemon verbena, blood orange, jasmine and sandalwood.  Here´s her extensive review.  I get the citrus-y opening, and the gardenia perfume weaves itself in and out – it pops in, fades, and when it´s not there you´ve got a lovely green jasmine, no cheese note, nothing particularly indolic going on here, a little woods.  I´m gonna quote Patty, who put it beautifully: “There is a richness to this perfume, hinting at dark longing, mixed with regret, but never toppling over into the abyss of despair. It is lush, almost too ripely indulgent at times, but manages to pull back before the serious decay sets in. Mostly, it is beautiful and has sillage that wafts gently around you – a soft, rich, velvety sillage. Exquisite, unique and haunting.”Heroine – Duh, I always thought this was “Heroin,” which I thought was a skeevy name for a fragrance, so I´m pleased to discover I was wrong.Notes are ginger, tuberose, frangipani, opoponax and Moroccan cedarwood.It´s murky on me at the start – kind of a mishmash of tropical flowers and wet mud – but give it a few and the ginger and opoponax shove the whole hot mess in the direction of a peppery, resinous floral.I wish the flowers were less present on me and the ginger were stronger; I find it a tad sweet, and it´s less interesting than Vine or Lady Day.Having said that, it´s very pretty, yet just enough off-kilter (there´s a wet, green, earthy note in there) that it´s not dull.

Black Rosette – proving once again that I don´t like rose unless you freak it up a little.Black Rosette is saved for me by the addition of leather and mint.The opening is just … very peculiar.It smells like a cross between artemisia and camphor.It´s medicinal but not unpleasant, I kind of like it.After the camphor fades I get a very leathery rose, but the rose itself is kind of new and green – that florist-fridge-rose smell never leaves, like a rose version of Tuberose Criminelle.I wouldn´t wear it, it´s not me, but I think it´s beautifully done.

Heroine lasted a little less than average on me (4 – 5 hours).Lady Day had a charming way of fading and reappearing suddenly over the course of 8 hours, like being haunted by a particularly lovely ghost.Black Rosette lasted most of the day before riding off into the sunset. Vine lasted, I kid you not, 36 hours on the back of my hand (which means: through many handwashings).I was thrilled, but if you hate it, consider yourself warned.I tried only parfums, and don´t know whether the EDPs wear differently.These had excellent sillage on me, with a little going a long way.I´m impressed with these, and I´m going to explore more of the line on my next trip toNew York.They weren´t quite as bizarre as I expected, which was fine.Vine and Lady Day were a trip well worth taking.If any of you have particular recommendations from the line, I´d like to hear them.

Image: rothkochapel.org