Perfume Review: Ineke Evening Edged in Gold

I have been a fan of Ineke in theory, i.e. I thought that the perfumes were imaginative and lovely, but not my kind of thing... too fresh, too transparent. Evening Edged in Gold, a decidedly more substantial, floral-oriental, addition to the collection, is done very much to my liking. With notes of osmanthus, plum, angel's trumpet, saffron, cinnamon bark, midnight candy, leather and woods, it is a warm, languid, sweet fragrance that makes me think of the last really warm days of summer. Where I grew up, summer invariably ended on my birthday, in mid-August. The 15th was a cut-off line, after which the weather would become gloomy and rainy till Indian Summer would sometimes return some of the golden glory at the end of September. The intoxicating sweetness of the apricoty osmanthus and plums (I haven't encountered angel's trumpet or midnight candy, but they are said to have a very sweet smell as well), is evocative of desperate desire to bloom, to breathe, to live, which I always imagine is palpable on those last sultry August nights. Every petal of every flower is eagerly open, absorbing all the warmth it can, releasing as much scent as it can... I don't smell saffron in Evening Edged in Gold, but I do get a lot of cinnamon, which I think goes wonderfully well with the nectarous, ripe quality of the flowers and which enhances the balmy, comforting feel of the woody base. The latter is the soft cashmere shawl one is eventually compelled to pull over one's shoulders sitting outside on a last night of summer, because cold breeze would inevitably appear out of nowhere, making one shiver not so much from the chill as from a vague sense of foreboding... the breeze would ruffle hair and petals, and whisper in the leaves that summer is over, over, over... Evening Edged in Gold is available at ineke.com, $88.00 for 2.5oz.