Oranzo Sylvaine Delacourte 2019

Sylvaine Delacourte worked for over 15 years as a VIP consultant at Guerlain and was able to gain extensive experience, especially in creating custom personal perfumes, which she now preferred to incorporate into her own collections. She made use of her talent to highlight specific characteristics of individual fragrance notes through the selection of raw materials, to bring out another facet, or even to change the entire character of a scent.

After she had already dedicated herself to the fragrance notes of musk and vanilla with five fragrances each, the Orange Blossom Collection has now been released, focusing entirely on the orange blossom. I must admit that the marketing concept of launching several fragrances with overlapping notes brings a wry smile to my face. At first, I thought that Sylvaine, after 200 attempts to develop a perfume (as she claims), ultimately couldn't decide which one was the best. So she took the 5 best and released them all together. Let the customer decide. But I think that wouldn’t do justice to her ambition.

Since her sample sets are very affordable compared to many other brands, you can’t go wrong approaching her method and sniffing out the subtle differences.

From the Orange Blossom Collection, I liked Oranzo the best. Perhaps it’s because the orange blossom here shows its unsweetened and non-floral side, and for me, it is also the most masculine scent in the line. Although I am well aware that many women might also take a liking to this fragrance.

Oranzo starts off fresh-spicy, with the citrus notes - especially bitter orange - not taking center stage too much and soon being accompanied by light jasmine and delicate orange blossom. Stripped of any sweetness, the orange blossom is unable to set fruity or softer accents. Rather, woody and green notes take over, which can certainly be traced back to the mastic. The mastic resin, derived from the trunks of the wild pistachio, exudes an almost ethereal-green, slightly bitter aroma that reminds me of freshly peeled tree trunks. At the same time, it creates a refreshing and invigorating feeling that catapults Oranzo directly onto the summer fragrance shortlist.

As it progresses, "clean" musk joins in, accompanied by a dry powderiness, but this too wants nothing to do with sweetness and leaves Oranzo in its - yes, one could accuse it of being - straightforward, transformation-resistant slightly bitter-green woodiness. But there are people who like that sort of thing. I, for example.

Oranzo is certainly not the flagship of the orange blossom theme in the collection, as it is actually the least perceptible compared to the other 4 fragrances. Nevertheless, Oranzo is an uncomplicated, refreshing clean scent that is by no means watered down.

I have come to really like the concept of thematically exploring individual fragrance materials. The other 4 from the line smell completely different. And so one embarks on a quest to discover the orange blossom and finds that there is much more behind it.