Happy vernal equinox. Boy, is it welcome.
The past few days have been really pleasant: beautiful and sunny, cold in the AM but warmer by midday. A huge, huge contrast to what we experienced the first two months of this year.
Flowers are doing their thing; trimmed the top of the jasmine so it spreads rather than just growing up more. People’s brains are going loopy due to the sun. More accidents. And loads more potholes in the roads. Still, much to be thankful for.
The second of the travel sizes my friend gifted me in London is by Memo. My only face to face encounter with the brand was with Portia years ago at Harvey Nichols in London, after we’d had a lovely afternoon tea.
Portia has written about different Memo fragrances on the Posse.
Anyway, by that time of day we’d done a load of sampling and my brain and nose were doing the equivalent of panting. So, of course, we looked at Memo which has so many perfumes my head was spinning and I just wasn’t engaging any more.
Memo is French and has all kinds of genres with sub-genres (eg, leathers of different ilks).
I don’t remember anything about what we might have smelled.
But, Odeon. It came in a nice box – a 5ml spray which is a great size.
Released in 2020, Fragrantica has the following notes: rose, rose jam, sandalwood, patchouli, cashmeran, tonka bean, amber and musk.
Really nice bottle art, imho. Just to say straight off, if you enjoy the Lush Rose Jam shower gel this might be for you. It’s that kind of perfume.
At the top I get jammy rose and patchouli, and it’s really nice. Not overwhelming. Rose but juicy plus a bit of astringency from the patchouli.
As it develops it pretends it might fall over the gourmand cliff (ie, the tonka shows up) but ha, no.
In the drydown it’s a soft musky rose that doesn’t completely lose its jammy aspect.
Not hugely long-lived (probably 4-5 hours) – nonetheless, it’s really really nice while it lasts.
I don’t need this. So, once the 5ml is gone that’s me done. But, I will enjoy it while it’s around. What’s your weather doing now that we’ve moved from winter to spring (unless you’re in a different hemisphere)?
Pics: pexels, wiki parfum
Well ours is pretty much perfect. Today. Otherwise we have been having summer right up to spring. 90’s on the West Side (which means 220 degrees hotter in the valley. And in those gated communities like Beverly Park it gets even hotter. I’m surprised they just didn’t dome over it.
I saw ( and tried) the Memo line back when Merz was hosting the lovely Andy Tauer ( not affiliated with Memo, obvs ) … I only remember that there were quite a few of them and the black and gold bottles were gorgeous.
Andy was, of course, an absolute delight!
I continue to wonder why certain houses think a huge offering is the way to go. Does my head in.
There’s a hotel here that carries several of the MEMO line but there’s so many it’s hard to keep track of. We continue to be very warm and dry, I’d love some rain!
We’ve been dry, thank goodness. Spring pollen is starting up though so wouldn’t mind some night time rain to clear things.
I have tried a lot of MEMO perfumes. The only one I strongly liked was Lilibela, but that has been
reformulated. Now a hard pass. The rest of the line was average at best. The prices have been and still are way way too high for what you get.
BTW Cinammon I’m with you now on NVC Eshal! It took me a while….but it’s so much more than pretty. It’s beautiful!
Glad to hear you’ve come over to the Eshal side. It really is so very good.
I think I’m put off by the number perfumes, at least that’s how I felt at HN. Just too much for my brain.
Memo seemed really engaging to me about a decade ago so I bought the discovery set of the time. The only one I really fell for was Luxor Oud. It’s a classic jammy rose & oud done really well. So expensive at the time. None of the others caught my attention & I haven’t finished them. Must really revisit as my tastes have changed
Would be curious to hear your impressions of the discovery set.
Digging them out & assessing them again years later is a very good ideas. Thank you! Writing them up will help get me out of my current stasis. First I want to get my nose on the latest iteration of No5 EdT.
I want to sample the Shalimar anniversary edition. Not sure, though, that our local John Lewis will merit it and have stock.
We’re also enjoying real spring-like weather here. I did a bunch of yard work on Saturday raking up debris, and now I’ve got the body aches to prove it. But my little garden looks so much neater.
That Memo Paris Odeon sounds good since you compared it to Lush Rose Jam and it’s ilk. I like that kind of rose scent. What a pretty bottle — and great size!
Yup, I cut back the jasmine in the hope it will spread more rather than just throwing up new too shoots.
It is a really nice fragrance. Not earth shattering— just really pretty.
Heya Cinnamon,
We are heading to Autumn. Weather is fully unhinged. Rain, sunshine, wind and rain, gloomy, sunshine, humid, heat, cold. I’m loving it.
Memo make some really lovely things and their packaging is always beautiful. This sounds very nice, wearable and pretty. Odeon is also a happy, simple name to say when someone asks. Good for giving?
Portia xx
Omg! You Southerners !! You’ve got it upside down!!! ( j/k)
HA! Truth in reporting at last!
Totally upside down.
I love you Musette.
Portia xx
Ditto!
Somehow the name fits the juice. Really enjoyable stuff.
I read that first as gloomy sunshine and was going to ask what you meant. Alas, just gloomy and then sunshine.
HA! You should know gloomy sunshine Cinnamon. Especially in England.
It’s that wan, heavily cloud and mist dappled, freezing afternoon just before a 3pm hidden by clouds sunset in winter.
It’s still winter in Canada, we had 10cm of snow yesterday and it’s -5C (-11 with the wind chill). More snow likely today. But then we’ll have 6C and possible rain later this week, so it’s sort of spring. But definitely no flowers of any kind yet. I’m still wearing Bois d’Arménie and other winter frags, although yesterday I did wear Iris Torréfié for a little spring iris blast.
I only like a few of the older Memos (Shams Oud, Manoa, Tiger’s Nest), the newer ones haven’t interested me.
I don’t have the oomph to try many Memos. The sheer number makes me twitchy.
Snow … I think I’d mind our winters a bit less if we actually had proper snow at least once. As is, the weather is mostly just gross and this year was particularly bad.