New: L'Eau de Merzhin (Anatole Lebreton, 2013)


A couple of months ago Annamaria (Nyneve) put under my nose of a vial with a new fragrance  I hadn't heard anything about: "L'Eau de Merzhin" (ie Merlin's Water, in Breton). She was especially happy because the author was one of her French blogging friends, Anatole Lebreton (click to see his blog "La Civette au Bois Dormant", where the pic comes from).
Since I already knew Anatole's blog, three reflections immediately bursted to my mind:
1 - Perfume bloggers who write reviews of a certain tone, who understand the classics and love them, have  studied a lot. They may not have attended Isipca courses (and in some respects it's even better because their idea of perfume might be less standardized) but certainly have endeavored to find information and books in different languages ​​and have developed a sensitivity and a taste far from triviality.
2 - When a person like this decides to compose a scent,  he/she puts everything they've learned inside it, all the great classics they've loved, all the passion they have, as if it was a homage to the  Perfume Gods to thank them for all the pleasure and joy received over the years.
3 - Obviously, if the creative efforts result in a fragrance that satisfies them, it will certainly be something above a certain standard.

So I volunteered both my arms for spraying without asking for further details and... I fell in love!
Beautiful raw materials and a refined taste for classic perfumery produced a happy, generous, lively scent I haven't stopped wearing since.
Here you have the pyramid, in order to have an idea: galbanum (green, dry), angelica (aromatic green), violet leaf and ionones (delicate, watery,  green flower with a slightly poudree undertone) acacia, hawthorn, hyacinth (three delicate, soft and sweet flowers mimosa-like but also watery), heliotrope, hay and tonka bean (a bright, warm, golden dustiness, with a leather/animal accent), moss (dry, salty, leathery), anisic aldehyde (anisic and almost childlike), ambrettolide (musky, animalic, sweet, playful). 
The whole thing is wrapped in a cloud of superb quality iris butter making the scent translucent and incredibly comfortable.
Imagine a walk in the Breton countryside in early summer: everything is green, green, so intensely green that this color saturates your spirit passing through your eyes. Small yellow and white flowers dot the wild meadows, while a bright light envelops the landscape, forcing the birds to sing their hearts out.
It might seem a simple perfume, linear, almost naive ... and yet inside it you'll find the delicate melancholy of Guerlain's Apres L'Ondee, Vent Vert's carefree teens, the austere and somewhat pagan spirituality of Chanel No. 19. Learning a lesson and knowing how to transcend it in order to create something personal is not everybody's stuff...
The structure of the perfume is a perfect balance of opposite feelings (cool/warm, light/shade, wet/dry) that you perceive perfectly without any ever prevailing over the others (this isn't an easy task...). In addition, the olfactive journey is pleasant, the fragrance softens becoming more tender and dusty as it goes towards the end, always remaining invigoratingly green.
Projection, too is just perfect (it radiates from the body only a tiny bit) and the duration is very satisfactory both on the skin and on clothes. 
I consider this the best perfume smelled in a year, and certainly one of the most exciting and moving scents ever smelled in my life.

Should you want to try it, 30 or 60ml bottles (28 or 48 €) may still be available but I'm not sure, since it's a small production. Anyway Anatole's Blog will give you more information!

ps
Thanks to Anatole for creating this scent, and double thanks to Nyneve for making me know it!

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