Perfume Review: L'Artisan Mandarine Tout Simplement

Having grown up in the secular Soviet Union, I have always considered New Year to be a bigger holiday than Christmas (I must admit, I still kind of do). In fact, our family did not celebrate Christmas at all. New Year’s Eve was the day of the year to which I looked forward the most, because that is when I got presents brought by Grandfather Frost a.k.a. my dad hastily dressed up in a rented costume in the hall. The tree, lovingly decorated by my perfectionist of a mom, was always fantabulously, minimalistically elegant. And of course, the smells of New Year’s Eve were fantastic. To conjure that aroma, one would have to combine the scent of pine, mandarins, salad Olivier (I haven’t been to a single celebration in a Russian house that did not have this ubiquitous classic), “herring under fur coat”, Chicken Tabaka, my mom’s delectable tart Napoleon and champagne. This is not necessarily a fragrance I would want to wear on my body, but I would pay any sort of money to someone who would recreate the smell of New Year holiday as a room scent or a candle for me. Christopher Brosius, are you listening? We could call it Memory of Happiness. According to a recent survey, 78.9% of Russians cannot imagine New Year without mandarins, 76.3% must pop open a bottle of champagne right at midnight, and 75.2% have to have Olivier on their table. If I had to be content with just one of those New Year Musts, mandarins would be my smell of choice for achieving the New Year atmosphere. Last year, I reviewed Antica Farmasicta’s Vaniglia, Bourbon & Mandarino di Sicilia. This year I salute to Mandarine Tout Simplement by L’Artisan. I hope someone releases another nice mandarin scent in 2007, so that I could have a similar post next January. The beginning of Mandarine Tout Simplement is quite simply the truest, most realistic mandarin smell I have ever encountered save for the peeling and biting into the actual fruit. It has a slight fresh, green aspect to it, as if the mandarines in question come freshly picked, with a couple of leaves still attached to them. Unfortunately, on my skin, this mouthwatering mandarin-ness lasts 10 minutes at most. After that, the scent, although still mandarin-like, acquires a dry, woody note and generally becomes “paler” and rather less exciting. Sprayed on my hair, however, the mandarin part of the fragrance lasts a very long time and the scent itself lingers all day long. This is not a complex, deep creation, nor does it pretend to be. It is incredibly enjoyable, a happy, bright delight of a scent. I never want to be without it, especially during the Holiday Season. Mandarine Tout Simplement is available at BeautyCafe, $125.00 for the whopping 250ml. Image sources, sovetika.ru, gettyimages.com.