garden in sunlight - Septimanie Pavillon des Fleurs

A few weekends ago I attended Sniffapalooza, and at the event I met a great number of new people as well as reconnecting happily with older friends. I sampled a number of new perfumes, but the one that caught my nose the most was Pavillon des Fleurs from Septimanie Perfumes. Septimanie (pronounced SEPT ih MAH nee) was started by a East Coast garden designer, who was inspired by the gardens she designed.

Pavillon des Fleurs starts off as a very direct jasmine, with an undercurrent of ylang and orange blossom. It is rich and syrupy, with the heady, heavy-yet-uplifting smell of real jasmine absolute, redolent with indoles. The orange blossom and ylang which support the jasmine don't come forward too much in the beginning, though I openly admit I could not initially identify the third smell as ylang-ylang. It could be that this ylang from the Comoros, which is an island country found between Madagascar and Mozambique and southeast of the Seychelles, has a particular terroir that makes it different from the ylang I know from the Philippines. It could be that my nose is just ignorant. ;) Either way, the sweetness of the ylang mixes marvelously with the faintly citrus kick of orange blossom, and all throughout the evolution of the fragrance, these components never change. They grown fainter and meld with a base of lily of the valley, but on my skin I never smell leather or iris. To me, this is a good thing, since without them the composition seems to carry the romance of sun-warmed petals, at that moment when you close your eyes to sniff.

Another interesting thing about this fragrance is that the perfumer deliberately created it so that there's very little difference in the drydown. Jeanne Weber, the founder of Septimanie, informed me that she desired that from the start - she didn't want to smell like something else three hours later. Considering this fragrance is all about a garden and how it would smell, I would have to agree with her. The flowers chosen don't change their smells over the course of a few hours; why should the scent?

However, now that I've had several applications of the scent, what I find most interesting about it is that the smell is somewhat different depending on whether you dab it from a vial or spray it on. I found that both on the blotter and on my skin, two things change. When sprayed, the ylang is slightly less sweet, and the lily of the valley tends to meld into the shadows - when you dab, the ylang is much sweeter initially, and the lily of the valley shows up after fifteen minutes as though you're sitting on a bench a few feet from a cluster of them. I definitely prefer the scent sprayed, since it comes across more subtly without sacrificing elegance or romance.

For those of you who love packaging, the square flacon has a lovely heft to it and looks quite elegant. All in all, this perfume is a gorgeous spring and summer keeper. You can order this online from aedes.com, or at Takashimaya in Manhattan.