Sweet/Tart Part One: Roxana Illuminated Perfume Blossom

By Tom Roxana Villa has quickly become one of my favorite of the natural perfumers. She has introduced a new series of chocolate solid perfumes that I will be reviewing next week (with a sample give-away) but first I want to touch on one of her scents that she has brought back into production, Blossom. She describes blossom as a "traditional Eau de Cologne" based upon her memories of a scent she remembers from her childhood in Argentina called: Colonia de Bebe", which is somewhat like 4711. I've never smelled Colonia de Bebe, and I have smelled 4711. Well, let me clarify: I've smelled the vintage back in the 70's since my grandfather wore it. The stuff that you get today in the plastic vat at your local Duane Reade has as much to do with vintage 4711 as Diet Pepsi does to Dom Perignon. Blossom does evoke those memories. By using pure botanical ingredients she's created a delicious puzzle-box of a fragrance: it's both light with orange blossom yet heady with jasmine and prickly with rosemary. I don't want to write that it's fresh and clean because that usually evokes dryer sheets and those scents that smell vaguely like aluminium, but this is fresh and clean, as if you'd just plucked the flowers and the peel and rubbed them together in your hands. If you have any memory of "traditional Eau de Cologne" you'll connect with it immediately but even if you don't I defy you not to fall for this. While I can imagine bathing in this in a hot summer (especially in humidity) I can equally see it's brightness as being uplifting on a drab winter day. As I type this I am watching "Psycho" and thinking that John Gavin is the perfect image of the man who would smell like this: handsome, straighforward and very male. Not to say that a woman couldn't totally rock this. Certainly were I partnered I would buy one for my "Trevor" and ruthlessly filch.. $7.50 for a 5 gram spray bottle at her Etsy shop, she's promising larger sizes soon. I hope she adds body products, room spray and perhaps dryer sheets. Image source, Roxana Villa Illuminated