Aqua Allegoria Bergamote Calabria Guerlain 2017

With Aqua Allegoria fragrances, I always feel like I'm walking into a room where people are passionately baking, cooking, drinking tea or mixing cocktails. Natural-looking ingredients and simple compositions make the scents so culinary and delicious. I have a few very clear favorites from the Guerlain range, including Ginger Piccante and Teazzurra, but I especially love Bergamote Calabria.

This fragrance has the potential to be a signature scent, it gets very skin deep and human, has little of the artificial, distant feel that makes many fragrances seem more like armor than a second skin. I've become relatively sensitive to synthetic fragrances and don't use extremely strong perfumes or perfumed laundry detergent or skin creams (can trigger allergies in the long run anyway and pollutes the environment). The Bergamote Calabria I can tolerate well (but spray it rather towards my neck as a precaution, so that it does not permanently rise from my nose into my head) and do not have the feeling to bother others with an exaggerated sillage. Who hugs me warmly in greeting or sits right next to me, should catch a pleasant whiff of it.

When I smell this Guerlain, I immediately think of a balmy summer evening in Italy. I have the image of Betty Draper from the series Mad Men in mind, who designs a new self as an emancipated woman and spends a last vacation with her husband in Rome: An attractive woman in black, airy cocktail dress, make-up of the late 60s and hanging earrings with a large pearl on each side enters the terrace of a restaurant and orders an aperitif. Sex appeal and Italian dolce vita, but also a bit of thoughtful sensuality, make Bergamote Calabria as complex to me as people are. Fruity, citrusy bergamot is carried by a deep, pithy base - delicious like a good vermouth with lemon zest in a crystal glass. The bottle is a perfect match: Golden elegance meets delicate yellow cheerfulness.

So I would like to live!