Lost Paradise Urban Scents 2014

We were sitting in the courtyard of a ruined fortified castle in the middle of summer in southern France. By the way, I do not want to remember for the life of me where that could have been, but it smelled headache-inducing overwhelming from the thousands and thousands of tiny orange flowers of a picture-perfect shrub with rich green shiny leaves. The scent was intensely sweet and powerfully fruity, and I was entranced, secretly snapping off a little fexer in the hope that I might be able to root it and take it home that way. Until my husband said that the scent reminded him a little of toilet cakes. Bam! Klosteinchen!

And so my relationship with the osmanthus got a mighty crack after only a short time.
And my not overly passionate, yet so far untroubled relationship with Fragonard's "Ile d'Amour", an unspectacular and rather in the fresh direction of going fragrance with osmanthus as a core note, also.
Today I wear "Lost Paradise", Marie le Febvres homage to the unbridled, unrestrained draufballernden fragrances of the 80s with a powerful dose of osmanthus.

It is a very le-febvreske homage and thus: slim, transparent, floating. The fragrance doesn't copy, no, the fragrance describes, and it does so with quiet, melodic words. This is not the 80s-typical pasty, compact brushstroke, instead she inks a feather-light watercolor on wet paper.

I have to admit that I sometimes have a hard time with fragrances by Ms. Le Febvre. Their beauty, which is present without any question, opens up to me more through what I would now like to call an intellectual approach, less through a sensual-emotional one. I feel the same way about "Lost Paradise."

The entrance captivates with a very feathery peachy velvety fruitiness, soft, sunny, delicately sweet, far from the chumming up grumpy compote, which I so many fruity fragrances from the outset offended. Add to that a teeny citrusy sparkle and a bit of herbaceousness, it's beautifully dabbed on in an airy way and prevented from floating away with a velvety golden-yellow ribbon (the jasmine?) thrown loosely over it.

You first have to get it right: to incorporate a riotous note like osmanthus in such a way that it seems downright fragile.

In the course of time, a delicate warmth comes to it, a very soft spice supports the hitherto extremely fragile glassy structure gently from below. The fragrance becomes a little more stable, the colors a little more intense. So the fragrance lingers for a long time, eiderdaunig, quiet, friendly.

And then fades very slowly into this friendly velvet powdery peaceful warmth.

What about the toilet stones? I noticed them, of course; Ottoman-wise, I am probably spoiled for all time. They have me but - and this is a very big compliment for this gentle fragrance - not disturbed.

That's something.