I have always liked mimosa in fragrances. Rather, I should clarify: I have always liked Acacia farnesiana (cassie) and/or scents with heliotropin. The term “mimosa” is a bit of a moving target, even in botany, as there are about 400 species or cultivars of plants under this genus, mostly with pink or mauve flowers, in addition to many other shrubs or trees that produce poofy, cartoonish blossoms and were historically lumped in under the name by the public — silk tree being an example. The sweet, warm, powdery smell we encounter in perfumery, with its facets of almond, honey, violet, craft paste and fresh cucumber, comes from distillation of the soft, feathery yellow petal clusters of the acacia species that most of us in the West know as mimosa flowers. One of my most vivid and happy memories of visits to France is the bushels of mimosa branches tossed out during “La Bataille de Fleurs” or flower parade during the Carnaval de Nice, which winds its way along what must be one of the world’s most beautiful thoroughfares, the Promenade des Anglais.

For all its cheerful straight-forwardness, mimosa appears to be a hard note to use in perfume. There are very few credible soliflores and many mainstream fragrances with a strong mimosa presence come off as airheaded and shampoo-like. With the IFRA restrictions on heliotropin, it has become even more difficult, if not impossible, to base a fragrance around the flower. Looking to include perfumes with some availability in this list, I found that almost all the mimosa fragrances I’d enjoyed at the beginning of my perfume education in the mid-noughties were discontinued or reformulated. Caron Farnesiana, long the great classic of mimosa perfumes, has gone through so many versions that it is hard to keep track of them all…

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French niche line Parfums de Nicolaï has launched L’Eau Chic, a new unisex fragrance:

Add a little freshness to such a hot world…

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Blech. Despite being born a May baby, I have never been a fan of spring. I’m sure it’s different in the other parts of the world, but every year, people above the 39th parallel in Europe and North America stand on street corners at this time of year, leaning at a 75 degree angle into gusting drizzle, and insist: “It wasn’t like this last year!” Trust me, it was. The mud, the wind, the Easter snow or hailstorm, the false hope of that one giddy day near April Fool’s when the sun shone and the warm breezes blew, like in a laundry detergent commercial, before the rain and gray chill returned — it all happened last year. I am not a pessimist. It is merely that I believe in the motto of mothers everywhere: let’s not get worked up here. Crazed displays of Birkenstock sandals and patio furniture will only end in tears. I support measured celebrations of spring’s small pleasures. For one, it is ramp season. Perhaps you have received your tax return. The road salt has melted away and you can go to 2D movies without being subjected to aliens, robots or robotic aliens. And it is time for some of your freshest, prettiest, newest fragrances to grace the air.

Composing a Top 10 for this most uncertain of seasons, I have tried not to dwell on lost favorites or the flood of recent scents I’ve missed. Jean Patou Vacances, Gobin-Daudé Sève Exquise, and L’Artisan Jacinthe des Bois are all gone and it somehow felt irresponsible to include them in the list. I have vintage samples of the many spring classics that have been damaged or ruined by reformulation — Balmain Vent Vert, Caron Violette Précieuse, the silver fluidity of Diorissimo, the mysterious smoky-green of Worth Je Reviens, the original Dior Fahrenheit’s honeysuckle-and-wet-blacktop — and I use them sparingly and despairingly. I have not tried MDCI Un Coeur en Mai, Byredo La Tulipe, ElizabethW Magnolia or CB I Hate Perfume Wild Pansy and am trying to convince myself that I don’t need to do so. With no further excuses, my Top 10 of Spring…

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Mimosa fragrances must be tricky to pull off. There aren’t a lot of them out there. Besides Parfums de Nicolaï Mimosaique which I’m reviewing today, Caron Farnesiana, Guerlain Champs Elysées, and L’Artisan Parfumeur Mimosa Pour Moi seem to hold the field. (The jury seems to be still out on Annick Goutal’s limited edition Le Mimosa that Kevin reviewed last week.)

Or maybe mimosa just isn’t a very popular note. The milky almond sweetness of mimosa mimics heliotrope, and not everyone’s a fan. I read lots of comparisons of heliotrope to “plastic doll head,” for instance. Me, I love the smell of both heliotrope and mimosa, and I adore the fresh, warm ease of Parfums de Nicolai Mimosaique Eau de Parfum…

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In a recent post at Perfume Posse, Musette described her adolescent self as “Geek before Geek was cool”. During a week when I watched The Social Network and contemplated buying a Gregory Brothers / Auto-Tune the News t-shirt, her description was just another sign that we have lived to see the day my mother was always promising me would come: nerds have inherited the earth. We’ve come a long way since the 1980s and nerdom has evolved: gone are the high pants and the pocket protectors (as well as most of the pens), nerds of every gender and race are acknowledged, and globalization and the internet have opened up new, niche fields of nerd inquiry. No longer restricted to math, science, computing and Star Trek conventions, nerds are becoming foodies and bespectacled mixologists, pop musicians, graphic novelists and film bloggers, beekeepers, adventure travelers, market watchers, reality television competitors and whistle-blowing website activists. Nerds have money. They own the best home theatre equipment and make the coolest Halloween costumes. They know the only coffee place in town with a Clover. And, increasingly, some of them are smelling really good.

Perfume is a great hobby for geeks and systems wonks. It can involve hours and days and weeks of research into a secretive, trend-driven and detail-oriented industry. You end up collecting bottles and vials, ordering or swapping rarities through the mail and building storage units or furniture to organize your collection. You exhibit a lot of mavenish behavior, like checking currency conversion websites multiple times a day. Almost every perfumista of long-standing I know keeps a spreadsheet or electronic notepad full of data on sample testing count, fragrance notes, prices, perfumer names or vintage scent markers…

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Parfums de Nicolaï’s new Kiss Me Tender was advertised as a fragrance that “takes you from vanilla to aniseed, via almonds and freshly-cut hay” — hard to resist, at least for me. That it was centered around heliotrope is something I kept in the back of my head as a warning, heliotrope not being a favorite note of mine, at least, not in heavy concentrations.

The opening is bright, sweet and spicy, and it’s strong. If you find it hard going, hang on: Kiss Me Tender is as soft and bashfully romantic as its name within 20 minutes. The ad copy mentions Jordan almonds, and if you picture them in mixed pastels you’ll get the idea, although the marshmallow hearts shown above are perhaps a better fit. This is a pale, fluffy gourmand-floral vanilla, very feminine, with mild green notes countering the sweetness in the early stages…

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Violette in Love, by Parfums de Nicolaï, came out in 2009. I can’t remember when I first tried it, but I think it wasn’t until much later, possibly the following year. At any rate, I thought it was pretty but maybe too charming for my taste, and I set it aside.

Now, there was a time when I tried almost everything — everything I didn’t absolutely detest, anyway — at least a few times. Many fragrances I tried more than that. I might have worn the same fragrance, off and on, for a few weeks: lived with it awhile, in other words, before deciding what I thought of it.

Those days are long gone. It is not just that there are too many fragrances, practically speaking, to spend that much time on each one. It’s also a psychological effect, distantly related, perhaps, to the well-documented studies that show that more choice does not lead to more happiness: when there are so many fragrances, it seems less important (to me, anyway, slacker that I am) if I miss one or two gems. I know I can’t find them all, but surely I’ll find plenty of other gems…

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Her own olfactory signature admits to certain genetic tendencies. "I am influenced by my family!" she admitted with rueful laugh. "Growing up Guerlain was always only nice perfumes, something you could recognize from afar, the sillage, and you would know it was Guerlain. I wanted to have the same approach."

— Perfumer Patricia de Nicolaï of Parfums de Nicolaï, quoted in Scent of a woman at the National Post.

Parfums de Nicolaï has launched Kiss Me Tender, a new floriental fragrance for women:

A scent that takes you from vanilla to aniseed…

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Few things in life inspire loyalty in me like the Parfums de Nicolaï line. No doubt the packaging is plain — but surely this can be overlooked when the contents are so beautiful and yet so affordable? Many of the newer niche brands charge a lot more for an equally ugly bottle. Yes, the products seem to be more expensive in North America than in Europe — but it feels churlish to complain when even the inflated USD or CAD price is a bargain. Besides, the dysfunctional website for the line urges you to “Buy Now” without giving the cost of anything in Euros or any other currency — I’m serious, go check it out: the price column reads zero for all products in every size — so North Americans are never going to know what deals they’re missing anyway.¹ Furthermore, the sight of each squat 30 ml bottle of Maharadjah or Sacrebleu warms my heart: may every other perfume company see the light and start providing smaller, reasonably priced packaging across the board!

True, it is often difficult to determine when or whether a Nicolaï fragrance has been discontinued, renamed or reformulated under the same name, and there are clearly some problems with the North American distribution, as many products seem to be on perpetual “backorder” — but even this commercial ineptitude sparks a foolish fondness in me. In this age of the hard sell, it is heartening — if nerve-wracking! — to see fragrances survive simply because they smell darn good…

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