By Marina
A rooftop garden in a big city is on my wishlist. Hermès's olfactory verison of one (Hermès building, 24 Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré in Paris) is not. Maybe because I always imagined I'd grow roses in mine, and not apples.
I like the beginning of Un Jardin sur le Toit, don't dislike its drydown, and want to wash it off in the middle of its development. In the top, it smells on me like mesclun salad with apples and pears, in the proportion of 90% salad greens, 9% apples and 1% pears. Overall, the composition is very light on pear to me, luckily. And, for most of its life on my skin, very heavy on apple, sadly. I have yet to meet an apple in perfume that I love. In fact, there are only a few that I merely tolerate. And that is why, as soon as "an undetermined mix of fresh and available" salad leaves are eaten up by my green-loving skin, and UJSLT starts coming up all apples, it is a no go for me. Maybe if it were juicy, (over)ripe, high quality fruits, it would have been better, but the apples here smell to me like those fragrance-free, tasteless generic green apples that in our supermarket pass as "Granny Smith".
There is some rosy-ness in the middle, but not much, and all it does is make the apples sweeter. When rose gives way to something still florally but greener, spicier, drier, which I'd call a geranium-like quality, apples start to subside too, and now, towards the end, when the vegetal feel returns, I can bear Sur le Toit again. Overall I like it.Well, to censoriously use one my husband's favorite quotations from Mark Lamarr circa 2001-ish Never Mind the Buzzcocks... I say I like it, what I really mean is I tolerate it. I say I tolerate it, what I actually want to do is insert 73 chop sticks into my nose...
OK, fine that was a bit too dramatic for a perfume this unremarkable and for the most part inoffensive.
Available wherever Hermes is sold, $90.00-$125.00.
Image source, hermes.com.
Were I served the salad you mentioned I'd be wondering where the counterpoint was. Toasted walnuts? Crumbled Shropshire? Aged Balsamic (yes, I am a child of the 80's)? Even just a grind of pepper?
ReplyDeleteThis scent seems like that Woody Allen joke about prisoners being served a nourishing bowl of warm steam..
I tried this recently, and found that it does rather better on skin then on paper. But now I agree with Tom, it probably does best in a salad. With crunchy sourdough croutons smeared with Stilton.
ReplyDeleteI'm hungry now, but alas, I have no desire whatever to put this on my skin. Thanks a lot, guys. :)
ReplyDeleteI like Toit. Like a rooftop garden (which I aspire to, too) it grew on me. ;)
ReplyDeleteI had such high hopes for this one, but apple is a no-go for me as well. Thanks for the heads up!
ReplyDeleteAlas.
ReplyDeleteI spent this last Monday afternoon with trying to decide if I like UJSLT, or not. The best I can say about it though is "unremarcable" - just as you said, Marina...
ReplyDeleteI like the drydown, but the opening is a little harsh for me. I like apple a little, and thoroughly disliked pear until last week, when I tried L'Artisan's Mon Numero 1, which has pear and mimosa. It is much more subtle and delicate than UJSLT, and perhaps the latter suffered a harsher judgment by being simultaneously compared to the former....
ReplyDelete-Marla
The apple could definitely be a deal-breaker for me too, I will have to try this and see what kind of prism JCE sees it through. I just love Un Jardin Sur le Nil and Apres le Mousson. I am a bit surprised by the "theme" of this latest one, it seems so ordinary compared to the others.
ReplyDeleteTom,
ReplyDeleteMmm, some cheese would do wonders for this :)
Jarvis
ReplyDeleteHad no dinner yet, this is cruelty :)
Linda
ReplyDeleteDitto!
Birgit
ReplyDeleteIf anyone can make it smell lovely it is you
Tammy
ReplyDeleteCan we think of one great awesomely wearable apple scent? :)
Alyssa
ReplyDeleteIndeed :)
Melinda
ReplyDeleteIt's a little sad that it is so :(
Marla
ReplyDeleteMost anything would smell harsh to next to the delicate MpM, that's true
Donna
ReplyDeleteTrue. I wonder if it is the last one in the series. They traveled all over the world and finally they are done.
It dawned on me the other day that it smells very much like shampoo. In general, these Jardins are not my cup of tea, but I am utterly disappointed in this one.
ReplyDeleteVictoria
ReplyDeleteAha, so I am not coo-coo being disappointed in it. I can see the shampoo analogy too.
Hear, hear!
ReplyDelete:))
ReplyDelete