Hermes Un Jardin En Mediterranee

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I’ll be the first to admit that I know nothing about the Mediterranean. I’ve never been, and won’t be for quite some time. Though from all that I’ve seen, heard, read and apparently, smelled, it is a lovely place. Hermes’ version of the Mediterranean, as they’ve declared, tries to capture the concept of the cool, watery, light aura.

Un Jardin En Mediterranee

Un Jardin En Mediterranee

In Bottle: Citrus, green and full with a light refreshing feel to it.

Applied:  Light citrus lots of juiciness in the opening and quite green and pleasant. I like how light handed, Un Jardin En Mediterranee starts off. It falls a little in the mid-stage, floating a floral my way very briefly before it settles into this thick cypress and cedar fragrance with a bit of green kick. This is a fragrance, I imagine wearing if I had an excess of flowing dresses and a beautiful garden behind my historical estate. As it is, wearing it while hunched over my work computer and contemplating its intricacies at a ridiculous hour makes me feel a bit uncomfortable. Like this isn’t the fragrance for me. It smells pleasant enough. Light, green, citrus and cypress and the cedar isn’t too bothersome either. It just doesn’t seem like it meshes with me in general.

Extra: Developed by Jean Claude Ellena, Mediterranee is a part of a collection. Others in this collection include Un Jardin Sur Le Toit and Un Jardin Sur Le Nil.

Design: Lovely, simple Hermes design. I’m a sucker for the specific colors they chose to do this series in. Would look great lined up in a row.

Fragrance Family: Fresh Floral

Notes: Orange, lemon, bergamot, oleander, orange blossom, fig leaf, cypress, cedar, musk, juniper.

I got into gardening over the past year, having moved somewhere that experiences more months of non-winter than “two” and discovered how fascinating growing and tending to plantlife is. It’s a real shame that I apparently have a brown thumb and maybe that’s why Mediterranee makes me feel like a fraud :-D.

Reviewed in This Post: Un Jardin En Mediterranee, 2003, Eau de Parfum.

Susanne Lang Vanilla Coconut

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Vanilla? Coconut? You’d have to get a vice to keep me away. Two of the things I like most combined into one fragrance should be a winner. Unfortunately a lot of fragrances that tote vanilla and coconut together tend to cheese out of the race by using the sour coconut note along with the plastic vanilla note, thus making themselves smell exactly like their competition. Susanne Lang‘s Vanilla Coconut does not suffer from this plastic and sour combination.  Vanilla Coconut SL

In Bottle: Pretty and fresh coconut flesh set in a lovely sweet pineapple mix and a touch of vanilla. Smells delicious, tropical and like a young coconut should!

Applied: Lovely green flare of coconut and pineapple. This smells like a drink right off the bat and as it starts to dry and head into the mid-stage, the coconut takes on a milky, creamy quality while losing the pineapple that was in the opening but retains its drinkable scent. There’s no mistaking the tropical nature of this fragrance as it stays well away from that common and heartbreaking sour coconut note that a lot of fragrances try to pass off as coconut. This is a rich, clean, crisp coconut that’s the embodiment of what a coconut scent should be like. It’s miles ahead of any other coconut scent I’ve tried and as a coconut lover, I’m just delighted. The relative simplicity of this fragrance doesn’t bother me much because it does what it needs to do so very well. The dry down gets a bit more vanilla-like with the coconut fading into a simple creamy vanilla scent.

Extra: Susanne Lang is a perfumer with a flagship store based in Toronto, Canada. There is a retailer that carries her products close to where I live. A rarity that I’m more than happy to accept. She offers bespoke fragrances and ready to wear scents. Vanilla Coconut is a member of her ready to wear scent line.

Design: Vanilla Coconut is bottled in a square glass bottle with a nice metal cap to protect the sprayer.

Fragrance Family: Fruity

Notes: Vanilla, coconut, pineapple, fig leaf, ginger.

You get only 30ml of  this stuff in a bottle but a lot of people underestimate just how long a 30ml bottle of perfume lasts. If you do use it every day you might have a hard time stretching the bottle for a year. If you spray it once in a while as you work on other fragrances too, a 30ml bottle will last for years–in terms of quantity anyway.

Reviewed in This Post: Vanilla Coconut, 2005, Eau de Parfum.