Perfume Review: Christian Dior Diorissimo

By Beth Finally, finally it is becoming spring! This time of year you will find me in the garden singing Beatles songs with my hands happily buried in the dirt,talking to my plants! I buy flats of flowers way too early, plant huge pots of herbs and take as many long walks in the woods as I can. I just love that smell, when the last of the snow is gone and the air is fresh and green. I’m a big believer in seasonal fragrance, certain times of the year will always live powerfully in my imagination and never disappoint me. I fall in love with everything and everyone in the spring, I kick up my heels, I play, I dance and make love with abandon. I fantasize about Beltane fires, I dream of picnics in the park with my friends! I make May wine! My husband accuses me of being an incurable romantic and I’m quite sure that he’s right about that! But doesn’t spring do that to everyone? To my husbands delight, the arrival of spring means that I also begin to wear as little as possible, with the exception of Diorissimo, a fragrance by the House of Dior that hardly needs any introduction at all, especially this time of year! It is my favorite springtime perfume, an absolute classic and for me once April cometh nothing else will do. Of all of the lily of the valley fragrances, I believe that Diorissimo is truly the most beautiful and I don’t live well without it! Sometimes in the dead of winter, I’ll spray a bit of Diorissimo just to remember! I now need to bite my lip, blush a bit and admit that I tried this fragrance for the very first time at age 16 when I discovered that it was Mick Jagger's favorite. I spent many a day in front of the mirror styling my hair, lining my eyes like Marianne Faithful and trying to become as mod as possible. Before Diorissimo I had been in love with Coty’s Muguet du Bois, but once I bought my first bottle of Diorissimo I was smitten. Alas, even though I spent many a summer following the Rolling Stones , Mick never discovered that I was alive, but my husband who also lives large in my imagination (and even larger in real life!) did and he adores the fragrance! Every time I spray myself with Diorissimo, he buries his head in my hair and sighs. My son told me once that if he ever found a girl that smelled like it that he would marry her on the spot. Diorissimo may appear innocent, but it casts quite a spell! Diorissimo is Muguet du Bois on steroids, a true Lily of the Valley fragrance that seems the only one of it's kind to really capture the essence of that beautiful little flower that appears for a fleeting few weeks in May. I’m really a purist when it comes to Muguet fragrances. I really don’t understand most of the perfumes that seem to fall into that category, to me they have nothing in common with that incredible scent. Lily of the Valley is such a lovely flower and every spring I bury my head in my bunches of it. I am lucky enough to have a gorgeous patch of it that I have loved since childhood, that lives in a quiet corner in my fathers garden. It is such a fleeting moment of time, that brief two week period in May when they bloom, so very Shakespearean. Diorissimo captures that moment for me perfectly. It is innocent yet very sexy, modern and at the same time very traditional, a truly iconic fragrance. It is very dressy, totally classic with black crepe and pearls, yet completely playful with hemp and linen. It is restrained yet sensual by nature and totally chic. Diorissimo is my Chanel. Although I adore wearing it for elegant dinners, I love to wear Diorissimo when I go riding and it smells even better mixed with the scents of saddle and the wild ramps of the springtime forest. Yes I know, it’s all part of my Lady Godiva fantasy, but I can hardly help myself! At this point, you can still find Diorissimo online, but the only store that I can find it in is Saks Fifth Avenue. If you’ve never tried it please do. You will love it, I promise. For the record, this is one fragrance that I enjoy the Eau de Toilette version better than the Parfum. I’m not sure why, but it could have to do with the vast quantities of it that I spray!

Perfume Review: Christian Dior Diorama

You are going to the Opéra and are dressed in the most expensive of silks and furs. You are rather bored with your adoring companion and spend the drive looking with slight disdain from the window of the Rolls at the nocturnal Paris. Your nose buried in the collar of your mink coat, you find yourself delighting in tonight’s perfume. You wonder if you could possibly be smelling melons, their luscious scent bursting with sunshine. There is something sparkly in this fragrance, almost champagne-like. Combined with the fruits (you think there might also be peaches and plums), the fizzy note seems so wonderfully joyful, like a happy smile…no, more than that- like unrestrained laughter…it is almost out of place in your life, which lately seems plagued by ennui. In the Opéra, your carelessly shrug off your furs into the arms of your escort. The show is dull and too long. The only exciting aspect of the evening seems to be your perfume. Every time you get little whiffs of it, your heart flutters a little. Never before did you find a scent to be not simply agreeable, but as meaningful and beautiful as a peace of art. Discretely smelling your wrist, you realize that the scent has changed, and although a little of the fruitiness you liked in the beginning still lingers, white flowers are now in full bloom, mostly jasmine, with perhaps some roses thrown in for good measure. They smell intoxicating, like a garden at night…pitch-dark night somewhere far, far away from here, somewhere exotic, where the life is full of danger and ardor… During the intermission, you sip champagne, enjoying just a little bit the admiring stares of the men and the furtive jealous glances of their women. Your perfume smells warmer now; there is something underneath those heady white flowers that is downright dirty ..Something that smells like soil in the garden at night, the soil on which you’d lie in a passionate embrace with someone dark and gorgeous, someone who excites you, who makes your knees weak and your mouth dry…You smile at your lover thinking, what a shame it is that he can never be that somebody…You tell yourself that you must get out of the relationship that has become so tedious and stifling. On the way home you decide that you will break up with your lover as soon as the car stops, before he suggest he sees you inside. Nose buried in a collar of your fur-coat, you marvel at what a total waste of a beautiful evening this outing has proved to be. Breathing in the warm, slightly spicy, strangely comforting notes of your perfume, you suddenly feel as if your heart might simply burst with hope and anticipation of a new beginning…Admiring the lights of Paris, you think of what a bizarrely absurd thing this life is…absurd and beautiful. Diorama is available at Harrods and at Dior's Boutique Avenue Montaigne in Paris, tel. 00 33 1 40 73 57 95 . The first image is from operagloves.com.

Le Parfum de Therese by Frederic Malle

If a perfume could have a face, Le Parfum de Thérèse’s would be one of those non-conforming faces described by Adorno and Horkheimer, faces that, like Greta Garbo's, do not look as if you could say "Hello sister!'' to them. Le Parfum de Thérèse was created in the early 1950s by Edmond Roudnitska for his wife Thérèse, who at that time was the only person allowed to wear it; in my mind, Le Parfum de Thérèse is associated with Greta Garbo. This perfume has Garbo’s husky voice, perfect bone structure and mesmerizing, impenetrable eyes. I file it, along with Chanel’s Bois des Iles and Guerlain’s Chamade, under the category of "Golden Perfumes”, because the image of shimmering warm gold is the one they evoke in my adoring mind. Le Parfum de Thérèse is vivid, but it is still an intimate perfume; to borrow Luca Turin’s phrase, it is full of shadowy recesses, as if illuminated by a candle (“Des parfums intimes, pleins de recoins sombres, comme éclairés à la bougie,“ from Le Guide). I would have never thought that a fragrance containing melon and jasmine could work so well on my skin, but it does; the blend is so smooth, not a single note stands out as too loud, yet the perfume keeps developing, changing from the darkly ripe fruity beginning to lovely understated green jasmine, to stunning rose, to the elegant woody- leathery drydown. “The face of Garbo is an idea”, said Roland Barthes. Le Parfum de Thérèse is Edmond Roudnitska’s concept of olfactory beauty, incandescent, ever-changing composition that is both soulful and awe-inspiring. Le Parfum de Thérèse is available from Editions de Parfum or from Barneys, $160.00 for 3,4oz.