Quelques Fleurs L'Original Houbigant 2018 Eau de Parfum Extrême

I love this so much, I think I might have found my perfect old-school, finely milled European white floral soap. Such beauty, I have no words! I only wish I had a sample of the other version and the extrait so that I could compare. It's really well blended and it's hard to recognize each individual flower in the composition. What stands out the most is the orange blossom and the lily of the valley, but the overall effect is...soap! The kind of high-end soap an Italian nona might store between white, starched bedsheets in the cupboard, so that they come out fresh and clean smelling. I really hate lily of the valley, but here, this whole scent is a nostalgic trip to the Old World. The projection and longevity are pretty impressive.

I bought samples of this Extreme Eau de Parfum and the Eau de Parfum.

I don't think they are supposed to be different one to the other just a slightly different concentration, however they do smell different and behave differently on my skin and on a blotter.

Nice enough but I was not impressed; there was no, 'oh this is nice' moment with either of them.

The Eau de Parfum has a brighter opening with some galbanum quite noticeable whereas I don't get the galbanum flurry with the Extreme. Both very quickly, just 10s of seconds, bed down into a tuberose/violet combination with something in the Eau de Parfum (maybe orange blossom) giving a fruity undercurrent like pineapple.

And there they sit. I get the occasional waft of a dense tuberose/violet fragrance that smells just a little sticky and stale, maybe honey like, although the rooms do have a nice enough scent to them.

My skin amps up vanilla/tonka bean notes and my son was very disappointed when in reply to his, 'what is that lovely sweet smell?', I replied, 'Is it this?', and it was which as I say disappointed him because he thought I had got off of my backside and made him the chocolate brownies that I have been promising to do for a few days.

So, all in all I found both the Extreme and the Eau de Parfum rather flat, nondescript offerings that fell far short of what I wanted it to be and what I expected.