How do you catch a cloud and pin it down? Such is the puzzle of describing a smell. Not everyone possesses the same palette of flora, fauna and funk, and even if we did, individual odour associations make universal experience tricky to map.
Do you share my pleasure at a quick niff of fresh garbage? You would if you’d lived in the US Embassy in Moscow as I did as a kid, happily playing with the feral kittens who proliferated in the compound’s rubbish dump. I find an aberrant approach to language helps build rickety bridges connecting personal kinks, which is part of the fun in writing about perfume.
Another part of the fun is parsing the witch’s brew of materials contained within. Especially when the stuff seems prosaic, like geranium, the central character in Sisley’s shimmering new eau de toilette, L’Eau Rêvée D’Hubert. Like the mousy secretary in a 1960s Rat Pack movie who is invisible to Dean Martin until removing her glasses renders her a bombshell, L’Eau Rêvée D’Hubert’s humble geranium is revealed to be a dazzler.
It was Sisley co-founder Countess Isabelle d’Ornano who noticed her family drawn to the climbing pelargonium in the garden of her French country home, rubbing the velvety leaves and savouring their minty-rosy aroma. Perfumer Alexis Dadier followed her lead and added the dry bite of shiso leaf and the arid aromatics of papyrus to create this symphony in green. Verdant, mossy, clear and sheer, L’Eau Rêvée D’Hubert is a wow of a cloud.
From £81 for 50ml (sisley-paris.co.uk)
