Mon âme 1907 2018

In my review of the sister scent of "Mon Ame," "Genevieve," where I also elaborated on the brand, I described "Genevieve" as a classic with a touch of modernity. "Mon Ame," on the other hand, does not lean towards any traditional fragrance family I know, but seems very innovative and hardly comparable to anything I am familiar with; yet it still comes across as classic in the best sense - perhaps due to its quality and its avoidance of dissonant gimmicks.

Recognizing individual fragrance notes is extremely difficult for me, even after looking at the fragrance pyramid. Aside from the iris and citrus notes, I cannot isolate any single scent; instead, I have some false-positive hits: I think I can sense lavender and green herbs, but they are supposedly not present. The iris is prominent, but by no means flatly dominant; it is muted in its sweetness as well as its bitterness, tempered by other notes, perhaps herbal, but less in the sense of covering up and more in the sense of softening or negating, like when different colors of light meet.

Due to my lack of a sure sense for individual notes, the subjective impressions take center stage: "Mon Ame," "My Soul," is an incredibly grounded and stable, resting, calm, and soothing, almost meditative scent. Like its sister Genevieve, it conveys elegance and sovereignty. At its heart, it could best be described as floral, but far from a sweet or harmlessly cheerful girlish florality; rather gentle, soft (yet this scent is densely woven), discreet, noble, perhaps even knowingly melancholic.

The fragrance evolves, but I cannot describe a clear progression (as I can hardly describe the individual notes anyway); after 2 to 3 hours, I think I sense a hint of ambery freshness, after four hours a livelier lavender freshness, then again a creamy floral note, after eight hours spicy and woody impressions emerge, and - I am quite sure of this - tonka notes are present. In this final phase, "Mon Ame" is probably more of a men's fragrance. Even before that, it is certainly wearable for men; at least I find it so (I have reason to doubt whether the women around me see it the same way). However, it might be more suited for the gentleman with refined tastes; it fits a youthful, metaphysically free nature boy like a fist to the eye.

A final word about the scent: Thermally, I perceive the fragrance as rather cool and yet, I don’t know how this works, occasionally as having a languid, almost sultry sensuality.

A final word about both, Genevieve and Mon Ame: Voilà, after the fantastic Czech brands Astrid and Alpa (drugstore shelves, inexpensive, aftershaves and colognes, old company histories), I have now found a favorite with the little Slovak sister (niche, exclusive distribution channels, EdPs, expensive, newly founded but made to look a bit old). The West Slavs have a rich olfactory heritage. Does anyone have tips for Polish fragrances?