Spring fragrances - Winter-Spring

Photo: Mr Parfumista (c)

Last week in The Scented Salamander Marie-Helene heralds the spring with eight fragrances. In the post she divides spring into it's different stages: Winter-Spring, Spring-Spring, Spring-Summer and the odd category Spring-Fall as she found the new L.I.LY from Stella McCartney to contains elements from both spring and fall.

As there is still basicly winter here in this nordic country, but with some spring like days in between, I will choose fragrances for the first category Winter-Spring, fragrances that fits the transition between winter and spring. Later on when we reach the Spring-Spring and Spring-Summer stages, I will post about frags which I crave for then.

Picking 10 for Spring-Winter:

Rive Gauche (YSL): Chilly and bright aldehydes is perfectly illustrating this time of the year. There is power in the rosy, metallic, aldehydic scent while it protends the milder days to come.

Chanel No 5 (Chanel): The icy marble of this aldehydic beauty perfectly fits in time of the breakup of the ice.

De Bachmakov (The Different Company): Have to second Marie-Helene in this choice. Bright, icy, herbals and some citrus with booze. Perfectly recalls my image of the defrosting thundra in Siberia.

Hiris (Hermès): This cold and as I image it, dark-blue, flowery iris is perfectly matching the high, bright and chilly air of the winter-spring season.

Chanel No 19 Poudré (Chanel): Another flowery iris but here it is interpreted as a powdery and musky, light green scent.

Donna Karan Gold (Donna Karan): Spicy, a slight metallic and cold lily over damp soil which defrosts in the sun. But it als has a darkness, as the chilly starlit evenings in the late winter.

Vol de Nuit (Guerlain): Even if not expressed as a cold fragrance it's classical aldehydic, iris-flowery, mossy-sandalwoody structure mediate the image of the starlit sky in a late winter evening. Just as Gold but in another way.

Ensence et Lavande (Serge Lutens): Clean lavender interacting with clean incense in a timeless, calming blend. I image the contrasting warmth from incense burning inside an ancient stone church with the chilly late winter wind outside.

Dzongkha (L'Artisan Parfumeur): The coldness and high air in the Himalyan mountins is perfectly captured in this bottle of cardamom, iris, incense, the and vetiver. Bertrand Duchaufour is truly a master, despite of his speed-creating in recent years.

Aoud Rose Petals (Montale):  A little warmth is also needed to balance the cold fragrances out. Since several years I have found that I crave for this distinctive pink, rosy, oud, saffron blend in the Winter-Spring.