JRiviera

Yes, there is: let me introduce you to MILK MUSK.

The first spray is dominated by the fruity-sweet, soft top note, which does not evaporate after a short time, but gradually joins the milk and vanilla in the heart note. It is only now that cedarwood, tonka bean and musk slowly trickle in and eat away at the fruits. What remains is a warm, soft, sweetly unobtrusive cleanliness.

It is no coincidence that MILK MUSK is my winter signature fragrance, my everyday winter fragrance that is also absolutely suitable for the office. The composition is so successful: Vanilla tonka bean, musk and cedarwood are wonderfully interwoven.

Clean, distant, soft and sweet as it is, I often use the fragrance when I go to sleep. I put an extra blanket over me, which wraps me up and gives me sweet dreams.


So beautiful *sigh

Jean Claude Ellena, you and I, we are like two who could have had a love story, but life always had an obstacle in store for the lovers and we remain united in thought, because in idle hours we imagine what could have been.

Nevertheless, I fall madly in love with you every time, because you don't fulfill my expectations, but top them.... first...., but here it is in concrete terms:

When you start smelling 'un jardin sur le nil', your nose already wants to trot along the usual paths: citrusy, summery, that direction. But NO! It's a green mango that you sniff repeatedly, intoxicated. This surprise! this freshness! this composition! is it the calamus (what is calamus anyway?) is it the sycamore (and what does sycamore actually smell like?) and while I am still completely overwhelmed and want to know more, understand more, smell more, i.e. get to the bottom of your secret, you are suddenly gone and leave me alone and I try to conjure up the memory of you, following faint wisps of scent. That is the obstacle: you are a very unreliable lover. The frustration at your sudden disappearance is enormous, precisely because you are so beautiful and attractive.

At first I thought: I've finally found it, my rose! my simple, plain, small, clean rose. Because that's how the fragrance starts: as if you were sniffing a rose in the garden in the early morning, the dewdrops still beading on it, and then the fruits in the top note become more and more noticeable. The fragrance had above-average longevity on me, but at the end I was left with a watery rose smothered in thick lychee and raspberry jam. Too bad

In my search for the perfect rose fragrance, this one leaves me perplexed, because it is an oscillating scent. As soon as you think you've briefly experienced the beautiful, clear, clean scent of a rose, it already swings over into a fruity note. So a fruity rose? Yes, briefly, but then you smell something floral again, albeit less rosy (must be the magnolia and lotus then). Then the base comes through and you end up with the sweet vanilla and as soon as you've made friends with it, you're back in the top note and smell something fruity and citrusy and the journey starts all over again. So if you like exciting fragrance progressions and want a bit of rose, this is a good choice. With rose in the name, I would have liked more rose and less of the rest.

The question I always ask myself: Do fragrances smell different to us every day? So does a fragrance smell good to us one day and not so good another day? Or is that just me? Or is it a consequence of my corona illness? I'm asking this question because my perception of Verveine Cedrat has turned 180° since I bought it. It all started when I had an uncanny need for a nice, fresh, citrusy scent in the middle of winter. If it had been up to me, it would have been Aqua Viva, but my wallet thought: I'll give you ten euros and no more. So it had to be a cheapie and after extensive research I came across Jeanne Arthes and without thinking twice, I blindly ordered this fragrance based on the good ratings and reviews here. I still don't know whether I didn't like it at first because I had a clear idea of the scent I wanted to smell or whether it just smelled different to me four months ago. Because four months ago, I didn't like it at all. And I was already about to curse everyone who had rated it well here and leave a juicy review. And now I've taken another look at the fragrance AND I LOVE IT. It's fresh, it's citrusy. The lemon clearly dominates. What makes it special is the verbena. Verbena or lemon verbena has something tart and that makes the fragrance not drift into the 'toilet stone'-arty/citrusy or into limoncello-like sweetness, but Verveine cedrat is a sober, natural, clear fragrance. An unsweet lemon scent. I have to say: I really only smell lemon and verbena, with a very light touch of orange to round it off. I don't notice grapefruit and mandarin. The only downer: the longevity. Like many citrus fragrances, it fades very, very quickly. But, as it is so cheap, you can always top it up.