MyQueen Alexander McQueen 2005
4
Very helpful Review
Queen of Violets
"My Queen" didn't make it easy for me. I bought it blind, driven by the tempting reviews on the German parfumo site and because I like the flanker "My Queen Light Mist" I bought earlier.
But the first spray was a disappointment as I could smell nothing of the promised joy of a fluffy gourmand fragrance on my skin. Almonds or marzipan? Negative.
I smelled a lot of pencilly cedarwood and a scratchy shrubby chaos of green scents and a disorientated violet. It needed about half an hour to sort out into fragrancy.
By now I believe my nose had to learn this fragrance, because nowadays the contrariness lasts only a couple of minutes before reaching the comfort zone.
The first thing I smell now after spraying is still cedar and an acidic tart green woody note like newly crushed branches and shrubs. This is a mutuality of "My Queen" and its flanker "My Queen Light Mist" which I also own and love and have reviewed as well. Both of them play on the violet note, but it is more pronounced here.
The tart shrubby note is soon smoothed over with warm and floral hues, and now is the only moment I would call gourmand: A breath of caramel and marzipan uniting with powderysweet violet and heliotrope.
The sweetness is mostly the delicately spicy sweetness of amber and it quickly shuts out caramel and and marzipan. This is a queen to kiss but not to lick. Violet and heliotrope are accompanied by rather shy orange blossoms and especially by iris.
Iris and amber gang up to retrieve the cedar that has been softened in the meantime by a very gentle patchouli and equally gentle vetiver. These two are weaving a dark warmth into the fragrance and underline the base note's powdery wood note. Above floats a warm, soft and slightly nostalgic heart made of violet, heliotrope and orange blossom. Other white flowers no more than weave a delicate veil in the background. I get a hint of tuberose, maybe an idea of jasmin, of rose and freesia, but truly only as a delicate veil of airy and elegant florality.
In the base note "My Queen" looses some of its florality to a delicately spicy powder note. The slightly cherrylike, woody hay and vanilla scent of heliotrope is replaced by real vanilla which stays in the background ans serves to give the sweetly spicy and woody powder base a soft and cuddly roundness.
This spicy and woody dry sweetness reminds me a little of the base of some fragrances by Sophia Grojsman, for instance "Sotto Voce", "Sun Moon Stars" or even the brash and loud "Exçla-ma'tion". Of their base only, mind.
And then it also reminds me of the scent that hangs in the air of the musée Jacquemart-André in Paris. Had they sold it in the museum's shop I'd have bought it, even if it had come in the form of a potpourri, and I detest potpourris.
"My Queen" has become my favourite fragrance for autumn and winter. It is a rather quiet scent, softly powdery, warm and mildly spicy and woody. A bit nostalgic but not old-fashioned.
I am my Queen's loyal subject...
But the first spray was a disappointment as I could smell nothing of the promised joy of a fluffy gourmand fragrance on my skin. Almonds or marzipan? Negative.
I smelled a lot of pencilly cedarwood and a scratchy shrubby chaos of green scents and a disorientated violet. It needed about half an hour to sort out into fragrancy.
By now I believe my nose had to learn this fragrance, because nowadays the contrariness lasts only a couple of minutes before reaching the comfort zone.
The first thing I smell now after spraying is still cedar and an acidic tart green woody note like newly crushed branches and shrubs. This is a mutuality of "My Queen" and its flanker "My Queen Light Mist" which I also own and love and have reviewed as well. Both of them play on the violet note, but it is more pronounced here.
The tart shrubby note is soon smoothed over with warm and floral hues, and now is the only moment I would call gourmand: A breath of caramel and marzipan uniting with powderysweet violet and heliotrope.
The sweetness is mostly the delicately spicy sweetness of amber and it quickly shuts out caramel and and marzipan. This is a queen to kiss but not to lick. Violet and heliotrope are accompanied by rather shy orange blossoms and especially by iris.
Iris and amber gang up to retrieve the cedar that has been softened in the meantime by a very gentle patchouli and equally gentle vetiver. These two are weaving a dark warmth into the fragrance and underline the base note's powdery wood note. Above floats a warm, soft and slightly nostalgic heart made of violet, heliotrope and orange blossom. Other white flowers no more than weave a delicate veil in the background. I get a hint of tuberose, maybe an idea of jasmin, of rose and freesia, but truly only as a delicate veil of airy and elegant florality.
In the base note "My Queen" looses some of its florality to a delicately spicy powder note. The slightly cherrylike, woody hay and vanilla scent of heliotrope is replaced by real vanilla which stays in the background ans serves to give the sweetly spicy and woody powder base a soft and cuddly roundness.
This spicy and woody dry sweetness reminds me a little of the base of some fragrances by Sophia Grojsman, for instance "Sotto Voce", "Sun Moon Stars" or even the brash and loud "Exçla-ma'tion". Of their base only, mind.
And then it also reminds me of the scent that hangs in the air of the musée Jacquemart-André in Paris. Had they sold it in the museum's shop I'd have bought it, even if it had come in the form of a potpourri, and I detest potpourris.
"My Queen" has become my favourite fragrance for autumn and winter. It is a rather quiet scent, softly powdery, warm and mildly spicy and woody. A bit nostalgic but not old-fashioned.
I am my Queen's loyal subject...