Solar Notes in your Perfume: Luminous, warm and dazzling

"And God said, 'Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night...' "
 ~Genesis 1:14

There's no denying that solar power, apart from a theological and cosmic issue, is a potent anti-depressant. But apart from the feeling the rays impart on our Vitamin D-deprived skin sucking them up hungrily and our soul reaching up to feed upon its welcoming embrace, is there anything being triggered in the olfactory nerve of our brains, making us euphoric by the smells recalling summer?

The Doric Temple of Athena Lindia, dating from about 300 BC in Lindos, 

Island of Rhodes, Greece. Photo by Kenny Barker via pinterest

Solar notes are a perfumery trope which has been going for a long time, historically speaking, if we track perfumery's record, but which has been slow to be acknowledged in common fragrance marketing parlance. It probably took Narciso for Her to first admit that the term "solar notes" ("solar musk" specifically in NR) seemed incomprehensible to the average perfume lover, yet it managed to display the feeling of brightness experienced rather well. The name Sunessence, attached to the products by Thierry Mugler, such as in Alien Sunessence, is brilliant in capturing all the desirability of the constantly evolving battery of our small astro-system. Fahrenheit 32 and Escale aux Marquises, both by Dior, even predispose us for the sunny disposition by their very presentation.

In truth, the reconstitution of floral notes which are hard or impossible to extract, such as gardenia, or which have been long associated with the balmy ambience of the tropical climates such as tiare and frangipani, no less so the lush ylang-ylang famously grown in the Comores islands, are full of molecules called salicylates which produce—exactly—this heated, sun-lit atmosphere which can warm the cockles of the harshest heart. The harvest/recolt edition of Amarige Ylang de Comores is but one of them, Mayotte (or Mahora in its previous incarnation by Guerlain) is another one. L de Lolita Lempicka, which proudly wears its solar notes on its sleeve, marries the warm notes of flowers, among them immortelle with its sunny ambience of the garrigue, with a salty sea-kissed skin hint, deepening the impression of a scorching sun where people drink out of ceramics and cut nets with daggers kept in their pockets.

La Plage de Calvi by Roger Broders (1930) via Vintage ad browser 

But the connection between the very real and realistic appreciation of the fragrant molecules in the actual flowers (sometimes unknown in their real form to natives and dwellers of northern climes) often perishes in effect compared to the omnipotent mental association between the scent of sun products and our evocation of summery pleasures. Many Europeans equate Ambre Solaire (and not the more American standard Coppertone with its coconut aroma) with summer vacations by the sea.

The secret lies in the use of benzyl salicylate, a blender with supremely floralizing capabilities which was initially used in sun products as a radiation-blocking substance, a now obsolete sunscreen. But the brand connection between product and scent necessitated that the ingredient be kept even after chem laboratories came up with much more effective sunscreens, a phenomenon of scent and product bond that is quiet, frequent and powerful. The effect of the floral note of Ambre Solaire was beloved for the added reason that benzyl salicylate was also favored throughout the best part of the early 20th century perfumery, giving its decisive tone in such classics as L'Air du Temps, Fidji, Norell or Je Reviens, adding a silky powdery sheen that could be felt more than smelled. The pairing with spicy particles also contributed in the creation of carnation accords, so beloved in the first couple of decades of the 20th century.

Nevertheless, the lineage goes even further back with the use of amyl salicylate as a fixative and a modifier in late 19th century mythical compositions, such as Piver's Le Trefle Incarnat (1898). The clover note (trefle is French for "clover") is related to coumarin (indeed coumarin is often referenced as the at once warm, sweetish and fresh note of "new mown hay") and was routinely used to render orchid notes; interestingly it's naturally found in black tea and rum, which smell nothing like orchids! Today isoamyl salicylate is used as a food additive giving a strawberry-like aroma, which convinces me, as if I needed further prompt, that smells are related in patterns that do not necessarily leap to the eye.

This sweetish note was used in one of the pioneering "sun fragrances" of the 1990s, Dior Bronze, ushering a genre of fresh, smooth, warmish and decidedly hedonistic scents to be used both as a sunbathing accompaniment (containing no photosensitizes in the formula) as well as an evocation of the joys of the beach when not worn at the beach, but extending its welcome. The rest was history and a modern best-selling trend. What is also most interesting is that salicylates play a big part in your favorite deodorant, fabric softener, shampoo or hair spray! Like the hen and the egg question, which came first, i.e. the love for solar notes in perfumes which helped the beachy and warm sunny fragrances kick in or the familiarization through the use of those core molecules in functional products, is a hard nut to crack.

Lily perfumes, so Easter-like in their white splendor with their red stamens, have benefited by a splattering of solar notes, too, to render their bright, waxy smell through, while giving the impression that they're being warmed by the sun and splattered by sea spray in some garden where the nights are clear and you can count the stars with ease. Lys Soleia by Guerlain or Vanille Galante by Hermes are two examples of lilies which take on powerfully vanillic and ylang facets which however manage not to evoke the pleasures of the mouth, but of the sensual abandon of one's whole body. Donna Karan Gold adds an ambery slice, much like the musky L de Lempicka does, to round things and broadcast its message even further, just like good ol' god Helios would have, melting poor Icarus's waxen-glued wings …

Sitting quietly, doing nothing, spring comes, and the grass grows by itself

Such a Zen feeling as that of today's title engulfs my psyche as I let myself bask in the sunny goodness, lazy like a spoiled cat that has seen some winters and some springs come and go but never lost her sense of contenment, sighing at the first warm days she's finally free to chase fat pigeons on the terracotta-laid rooftops.
Spring is univocally here as you can see and my mind wanders on avenues of floral and green fragrances that like a breath of optimism promise some fresh air blown over the ashes of burnt winter thoughts; that like a re-invigorated kittie is eager for some mental stretch.

"Every spring is the only spring - a perpetual astonishment", said Ellis Peters, and I couldn't express the feeling in a more awe-struck way at the eternal Dionysus's return.
The following fragrances, some of which might get a full review later on, if the mood strikes, are listed in no particular order but that of making me yearn for every dawn like it's the first one.


Tocadilly by Rochas
If a spring fragrance can combine warmth and coolness like the mark of one's breath on the window-pane on an ambiguous chilly morning that will later thaw, then the armload of lilacs hiding in this fragrance's heart are just what is needed. Christopher Sheldrake worked with a delicate palette that weaves jade-greens and wisteria-mauves into mixes that blur and leave you wondering at its ethereal beauty, much like watching a dance perfomance that defies gravity. Most unfairly overlooked and making me appreciate its rarity value even more!

Snob by Le Galion
The unusual green, licorice-bittersweet aspect of estragon, among the so-called "simples", one-remedy herbs, used by Hippocrates and possibly (?) named after a corruption of the middle-French esdragon (derived from the plant's Latin specific name artemisia dracunculus, "little dragon") is reputed to help in treating bites of insects and snakes. I wouldn't dream of wishing you any occurrence in which you should need its medicinal properties, but if you are simpatico to its charms, the combination with the classical floral bouquet of rose and jasmine is producing something very close to Patou's Joy and yet a little different in a cocky way in this -by now obscure- French firm's of the 1930s offering.

Cristalle by Chanel
If a cartload of juicy lemons is smiling my way on its embarkment spot in Sicily via an architectural austere flacon then I know I am in the presence of Cristalle in Eau de Toilette. If by some fateful chance I am garlanding my hair with yellow bits of honeysuckle blossoms while drinking said lemonade at an outdoor cinema just opening its gavel-strewn lawns in May after months of inertia, then Cristalle in Eau de Parfum is winking its seductive, youthful wiles at me. The night is nostalgic and promising and I am smitten by its pedigree and effortless elegance.

Lentisque by 06310
The at once fluffy and oleaginous flavour of mastic or lentisque, a resin from a variety of the pistachio tree growing on the island of Chios in the Eastern Aegean sea is hard to convincingly capture. In this Grasse family-owned company's fragrance, the beloved culinary lentisque is blended with essences of amber seed, iris, jasmin, Turkish rose, musk, amber and vetiver to render an amalgamation of aromata that seem to hazily blur like watercolours running into each other on thick drawning paper, mixed during a nonchalant Sunday afternoon.

Flora Nerolia by Guerlain
There is nothing more March-like than the smell of bitter orange trees blossoming, their waxy white petals infiltrating the glossy green of the leaves and some fruit still hanging from the branches, like a reminder of what has been already accomplished. Guerlain captured the ethereal vapors of steam of these delicate, ravishing blossoms and married them to a pre-emptying summery jasmine and the faint whiff of cool frankincense burning inside a Greek Orthodox church preparing for the country's most devout celebration: Easter. Flora Nerolia is like a snapshot of late Lent in Greece and for that reason is absolutely precious to me.

Vanille Galante by Hermès
One of my latest infatuations, this water-ballet of lily and vanilla pod is uttely charming on skin that is coming out of hibernation like migratory habits of exotic birds which come back to nest on one's roof, their happy melodious sounds signalling the final coming of warmth. If Vanille Galante were a bird it would be a Kookaburra.

Fiori di Capri by Carthusia
If wood is the Chinese symbol of elementals for spring, then Fiori di Capri is not out of place, thanks to its distinctive oak-y vibrance beneath an intensely indolic peppery carnation and some innocently coy lily of the valley. Allegedly based on an original fragrance by Father Prior of the San Giacomo Monastry on Capri, made in 1380, the scent is just this side short of being a ticket to either the verdant Capri itself or the vertiginous heights of the Balcon de Europa in Nerja, Malaga.

Une Fleur de Cassie by Frédéric Malle
The catty-animalic pong of cassie hiding in this gem floral in the Editions de Parfums line-up is an emblem of a formidable perfumer, Dominique Ropion. Cassie flower is succulently and troublingly feminine with its intimate aura of consumed bodies and here it reveals its facets unapologetically, with a little carnation as a counterpoint sumptuously combined with vanilla and sandlwood. Wearing it makes me feel like La Veuve Aphrodissia in Marguerite Yourcenar's Nouvelles Orientales collection of short stories: the impossible alliance between passion and social conventions.

Tubéreuse Criminelle by Serge Lutens
If Carnal Flower is my default tuberose for summer thanks to its green humid airness and slight coconutty deliciousness that makes it tropical and modern to the 9th degree, Tubereuse Criminelle is just the right rite of passage worthy of a Stravinsky suite to prepare the grounds for summer and thus perfect for this transitional period. Its camphoric opening is akin to spectacular and beautiful weirdness.

Amoureuse by Parfums DelRae Roth
Pry under a delicate constellation of petals and you come face to face with something more naughty than you would ever imagine at first: the genitals of a living organism; on this occasion a flower's! The spicy, heady, at once green and floral coalescence of Amoureuse, seguing to musky perfection is unashamedly sexy and reminiscent of what spring is all about: nature's season for mating!


If you have a moment to spare the following little online test might tell you which flowers' scented style might suit you best.

What are you wearing or planning to wear this sping?


All photos copyright Helg/Perfumeshrine

Hermessence Vanille Galante by Hermes: fragrance review

"Days begin and end in the dead of night. They are not shaped long, in the manner of things which lead to ends – arrow, road, man's life on earth. They are shaped round, in the manner of things eternal and stable – sun, world, God". ~Jean Giono

Jean Claude Ellena's ~resident perfumer of la maison Hermès~ favourite author sums up the mise en scène that the newest Hermessence radiates quietly: roundness, grace and a nostalgic lapsarian intimation of the eternal upon gazing beauty.
Revisiting my musings on how Jean Claude Ellena would interpret a note that is quite taken for granted, that of vanilla, I am reminded of what I had said: "Vanilla is exactly the cliché note that begs for Jean Claude Ellena's modus operandi: chastizing it by food deprivation would be beneficial pedagogically, I feel". It is with some suprise and delight, now I have obtained my own bottle of Vanille Galante, that I realise he doesn't focus so much on the bean flavour as much as on the fluffy, almost cloudy, cotton-feathery aspect it reproduces as a memento of certain flowers' inner core: lily, ylang ylang, and what I sense as the innermost pollen of lilac and wisteria, flowers which exude the most intoxicating, spicy and a little "dirty" underside. I have long felt that Jean Claude is an extremely sensual man with a keen intelligence that makes him exhibit a subtle eroticism in his creations and the language of flowers is by its nature supremely erotic. (After all flowers are the reproductive organs of plants and their aim is to attract pollinators). Let's not forget therefore that vanilla itself is a flower ~an exotic orchid of aphrodisiac properties with which Jean Claude has occupied himself even as an co-author in "Vanilles et Orchidées". And for those who believe in his transparent trajectory through le corps du métier he never produced a foody vanilla, there is proof to the contrary in his woody-edible Sublime Vanille (2001) for Lily Prune!

The French adjective "galant" (or "galante" for feminine nouns) has an intriguing background: In the romans de cour/courtly literature, that is the medieval novels of nobility (for example "Le Roman de la Rose" from 1420-30), "galant" signifies the quality of courteous, gentlemanly and often amorous. The phrase "en galante companie" thus signified the company of a representative of the opposite sex. An attracting vanilla then, but also idealised, exalted, romanticized in an almost Platonic ideal. In musical terms, "galant" refers to the European style of classical simplicity after the complexity of the late Baroque era in the third quarter of the 18th century with pre-eminent representatives the rhythmical composers François Couperin, Jean-Philippe Rameau, Georg Philipp Telemann and Antonio Vivaldi . Their cyclical forma ties in with the theme of La Reverdie (the return) in literary roman: that of eternal return of spring, a theme of pagan connotations . The common trait would be the lyrical approach of solidly thematic subjects, which could sneak into the treatment of vanilla in Vanille Galante, or what I will from now on affectionaly call "péripéties de vanilla". Thus Jean Claude ambitiously set out to produce an « insolent, complex et paradoxical» blossom that would shatter all preconceptions of how a vanilla fragrance would smell, aiming not at a photorealistic figurative imprint but an almost narrative play at personal impressions devoid of cheap sentimentalities. We reference Jean Giono again ~he says in "Voyage en Italie" that "Describing a painting in sentiments might seem better [than describing it in colours] but it only serves to shuffle the cards". Thus Ellena finds the core of his artistic philosophy anew: He reads "le sentiment" (the sentiment), but he hears "le-sens-qui-ment" (the sense that lies).

Eschewing the typical synthesized vanillin used in gourmand compositions as an easy trompe nez, Jean Claude went for a segment of authentic vanilla extract's olfactory facet; that of the slightly powdery and ethereal, producing a lithe, delicate composition like a swan's feather, like the whitest cotton balls, that truly breathes sensuously only on skin with the achingly poignant timbre of beauty destined to be ephemeral. Using a technique à rebours, Ellena doesn't use vanilla as an anchor of more volatile components nor does he render it dark, boozy and sinfully calorific à la Guerlain (Spiritueuse Double Vanille but also Shalimar and Shalimar Light ;and let's not forget Ylang et Vanille). He diffuses his vision into the clouds with adroitness and a playful sense of optimism, much like he did with L'Eau d'Hiver, when he was playing with the cassie, anisaledhyde and the warm savoury aspects of Apres L'Ondée.
The secret of Vanille Galante is kept by the great master in his favourite conjuring bag of tricks, to be partially revealed at his discretion. He had expresssed similar magical resourcefulness in Bois Farine and in the adumbration of saddlery hinted behind the florals in Kelly Calèche. In Vanille Galante the intriguing touch is the merest whiff of salty, of savoury, upon opening ~a facet that is used in haute patisserie to enhance the flavour and balance the sweeter aspects~ foiled into a lightly spicy one (comparable to how the innnermost stemons of white lilies smell) taking flight onto a mist of salicylates for diffusion (ylang ylang naturally encompasses benzyl salicylate and eugenol). The play is between spicy flowers, yellow flowers and anisic ones. The slight greeness, almost filled with watery liquid, note of jasmine vine is soon engulfed by a finespun suntan, powdery musky* and smoky balletic move.
*{Ellena likes to use Musc T, Muscone and Muscenone, which are rather powdery , expensive, non-laundry musks}.
In whole, there is no mistaking the European pedigree and atmosphere of Vanille Galante! There is no heaviness of languid exoticism despite the mental connotation of Marie Galante, the island of the Caribbean located in the Guadeloupean archipelago. Nor is there the escapism of endless summers under the cruel sun of the Tropics of Atuana. Urban sophistication and modernity prevail: The sense of the perfume is not diaphanous, nor opaque, but somewhere in-between, a little carnal, a little "dirty" underneath it all, forming a new direction in the mold of an airy floral gourmand that will have everyone copying it soon enough.

Lovers of Serge Lutens' Un Lys and Donna Karan's Gold would find a kindred spirit in Vanille Galante; nevertheless, the waxier aspects of the former are here rendered in a language of less oily interplay and the disposition is more in the Pantone scale of yellow than monumental marble white.
Vanille Galante is not only graceful, but terrifically gracious as well, offering a glimpse of warm sun and fleshy, smooth shoulders in the heart of winter. J'aime bien!

Vanille Galante forms part of the Hermessences collection and is accordingly available exclusively at Hermès boutiques around the world in a 100ml/3.4oz bottle or as a travel set of 4 smaller flacons of 15ml/0.5oz each.

Related reading on Perfumeshrine: Jean Claude Ellena scents review and opinions, the Hermessences, Hermes news and reviews.

Other reviews: Perfume Posse,Grain de Musc, 1000fragrances, auparfum, Peredepierre

Bottle pic © by Helg/Perfumeshrine
"A ride in the country" by H.Toulouse-Lautrec
Swan feather caught in foliage, via ngsprints.co.uk