Perfume Review: Miller Harris Geranium Bourbon

By Tom Or, led down the garden path by a perfume enabler... Saturday was a lovely day in Los Angeles, clear and warm. A perfect day to meet Gaia, The Non-Blonde and her husband who were in town for a short visit. Gaia is a lovely little sprite of a girl, with a mass of dark brown hair and huge sloe-eyes that could convince a guy of practically anything. Her husband is tall and good looking and it's evident that they are crazy about each other; they are very cute together. We spent at least an hour at ScentBar, sniffing various things and having loads of fun. Her husband took a bottle of L'Homme Sage, a scent that I love and own, Gaia took a bottle of Bois 1920 Extreme, which smelled so stunning on her twenty minutes after application that I am fairly convinced that I am going to have to get a bottle, since we had previously discovered that we are scent twins. That and I tried it on the stray inch of skin that was unspritzed and yes, it was that good on me. Another reason to give scents a couple of tries and to wait for the drydown; I had dismissed Bois 1920 as sort of "meh" when I tried them. I am sadly (because of my bank balance) going to have to revise that opinion. Another opinion I had to revise was about the fragrance that is the title of this review. I hadn't given it a try since the description at LuckyScent listed ingredients that read to me as "run, do not walk..": cassis berries and lemon geranium. The cassis and geranium are my usual codewords for scrub brush, dishsoap and at least three extra-strength tylenol but somehow the lemon and hint of rose in the geranium and cassis managed to make this pure, unadulterated heaven on me. Luckyscent describes it as an English garden after the rain. What they leave out is that there's a hunky gardener in there who's had a slug of Jack Daniels or two and a quick Lucky Strike and is interested in some serious Lady Chatterly action. Gaia didn't have to twist my arm for me to get this one. We left smelling seriously gorgeous and decamped to the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf for coffee on the terrace overlooking South Beverly Drive, then bought some incredible Macarons at a new store that sells only them on around the corner on Charleville Blvd. and wandered the South side of Beverly Hills, happily munching away and enjoying the spectacular day. Sated and smelling fabulous, they dropped me by my house and wended their way back to their hotel in Redondo before returning to New York and the three most evil words in the English language: Wind Chill Factor. Moral of the story? Smell everything, you never know. That, or when confronted by Macarons of the caliber of the ones at Paulette, forget there is a word "diet". Better yet, the moral is, perfume people are the best!