Aventurin

When I was a kid I liked a little book by Michal Snunit, "The Soul Bird". The bird knows many emotional colors, and for each there is a drawer in the bird's body.
Since my soul bird as a child was often rather sad and anxious and put his big wings over his little head like a blanket, I often imagined before falling asleep how sorrow and sorrow disappear into the drawers and are locked tightly with a beautifully squiggled key, so that they are hidden, somewhere far away in dark places, unreachable for us humans. Then I could usually fall asleep more calmly.

Vicolo Fiori is a fragrance that reminds me of the beautiful moments of my childhood, of those that shine forever in me, even if they sometimes seem strangely strange and distant.
It is a simple, bright and cheerful fragrance of fine, slender form, not strikingly elegant or even sublime, but also not unadorned in the sense of arbitrary or irrelevant.
It is lovely sun cream on pure, warm skin, is a dab of Nivea on round, rosy cheeks and a smiling child's mouth, is small white flowers in freshly washed hair and in the gentle summer wind.
It is the scent that surrounds us when we stand still and sunken in front of a bright flower, admire its beauty and think of nothing else.
Or if we drive through light-flooded avenues with a lemon ice cream in our hands and believe that summer will never end.
If we admire broken sunbeams in the sea of clouds, lie quietly on the beach and form sand angels, eat juicy peaches and need nothing further, the world is enough, everything is there, everything is good.
Simple and quiet happiness in the heart.
It still hangs as a comforting fragrance in our clothes when we remember the next day in the cool dawn that summer will soon be over, even though in the evening we always believe that the days never get shorter.

Vicolo Fiori is like the swan-white, shiny plumage of the happy soul bird who explores the world in the morning and at night, who lives in us and our dreams and is always there, who brings eternal summer - in spring, autumn and winter.

I read some books at irregular intervals, including the wonderful autobiographical novel "Die Schönen und Verdammten" by Francis Scott Fitzgerald.

Gloria Gilbert and Anthony Patch are at the centre of this moving story. Two iridescent figures, idiosyncratic and gifted, wanderers between suffering and lust, emptiness and thirst for life, crashes and hope. They love the stormy heartbeat of the metropolis and the magnificent palette of beauty, sink into the dream of wealth and freedom and the wild, never-ending nights of the glamorous twenties. They are the shining star couple of every party, they live and celebrate decadently and freely.
Since both have little to gain from everyday life and conventional employment and have little pleasure at all in working, but all the more in consuming, the flow of big money stagnates; instead, plenty of tears and plenty of alcohol flow.

L'Heure Bleue is a fragrance that fits into this extravagant world - not because it captures the noisy flickering of untamed dance steps on shiny black parquet flooring, but because it swirls with all the ecstasy of escapism and reality, light and shadow.
He reveals violet-blue dream landscapes, underscores bitter tragedy,
glows pale coppery and white gold, is bitter and dry, flowery and powdery, complex and tenderly mysteriously interwoven.
It is a special, memorable scent, whose opulent carnation nostalgia certainly does not please everyone, it is not a scent for sober asceticism, it is one to be patiently fathomed to grasp its magic.
It heralds the end of one day and the beginning of the next, warm summer night magic and autumnal morning melancholy, when the hours of repentance and reflection dawn, when the glasses are emptied and the feet are sore danced.
When the pale sun unveils shine broken by grey stripes of cloud and wounded hearts, but the twilight leads back into the blue expanse, hand in hand, every day anew, illuminated by chandeliers, candlelight and hungry lurking souls.
A fragrance as special and fascinating as Gloria and Anthony and their whole colorful-abysmal cosmos.

And if Gloria Guerlain were to direct Guerlain's fate, perhaps this great classic would no longer exist, because when Anthony asks her "Don't you want to preserve the old? Everything beautiful grows only up to a certain height, then it begins to care, fades away and evaporates memories as it fades away. And just as every period of history passes in our minds, so also the things belonging to that period of time should pass away; in this way they will be preserved for a while in the few hearts that are receptive to it - in mine, for example."

L'Heure Bleue does not pass away, it preserves its beauty and continues to grow, like all that is good and precious, destined to stay and grow, and will reach some hearts in all times.

I love the sea. In all appearances and colors.
The dramatic storm thunder of the wildly stirred Atlantic on rugged cliffs of Brittany.
The quiet, flat crystal bays of French Polynesian insect idyll.
The turquoise green, pine shaded light of the Côte d'Azur.
The kilometre-long, deep blue surfer paradises along Californian, palm-shaded coastal roads.
The light grey, windless North Sea and its sea of ice floes in winter, the lonely light spots of the lighthouses and the foggy silhouette of the Halligen on the horizon.

Since you can rarely have everything at the same time, the longing varieties in the distance regularly tempt you to buy fragrant surrogates in beautiful flacons.

Vicolo Fiori tells a little story of carefree beach happiness and quiet days by the sea, of childhood memories of the mild Baltic Sea or fine powdery Mediterranean beaches in strong, light floral tones.
It is not fresh and also not cool, it is the sun cream on warm, well-groomed skin, the fine scent of white blossoming avenues in Mediterranean, honey yellow light, the security of a tender touch in the evening in the beach chair, when the water shimmers silvery, the sand lilac grey blurs with the twilight and only the gentle sound of the surf breaks through the silence.

A straightforward, friendly, peachy fragrance for the longing for summer dresses, sandcastles and the boundless freedom of the sea. The world rests, the figures fade as in "The Sea Is Calm" by Cocorosie:

"La mer est calme
Sous l'écran de la caméra
Comme une ampoule electrique grillée
Dans un seau d'eau

Il est sous le feu des projecteurs
D'un soleil cassé
Il a jette son corps comme une ancre
Comme un morceau de sucre
Et s'est dissout"

I must confess: The idea of my own, well-kept roof terrace triggers in me a feeling of childlike exalted euphoria.
In the evening with a fine drop in the gentle wind follow the waves of the music, lose yourself in the play of colours of the watercoloured cloud landscapes and the light pulsation of the night, and underneath you the queues of cars flow like iridescent pearls, the gaze rests on the sky mirror of cold blue glass facades or majestic stucco buildings, over one watches the tourmaline black spotted firmament.
Those, who are denied this luck, have to dodge to bars, from which over Berlin's roofs one or the other piece of jewellery is enthroned, some unfortunately only for club members, who have bravely completed an accordingly strict admission procedure.

Gin Fizz is in its wonderfully tangy freshness like a cool-flowing seduction on such a roof terrace, still heated by glowing solar heat, filled with muffled voices, blossom-white shirts and grey-green silky shine on alabaster skin.
Bitter transparent juniper is flanked by a bright, clear tandem of mandarin and bergamot, framed by mossy, slightly herbaceous accents.
Lubin's lime green chypre alternates between spring light - airy - floral and dry - powdery - serious, too frosty to give off a hint of warmth, but too mild to pass as a creaky complex representative of this fragrance genus.

Gin Fizz is as fine as a noble cocktail, as refreshing as the dive in the opal shimmering swimming pool, as delicate as the stories in the soft rustling of the leaves, almost a little wistful in its soft fading - like the clinking of the glasses when the dawn of the night robs the soul.

I've dedicated a statement to Cristalle before, but this special Chanel deserves a comment - like so many other fragrances, I know, but perfume and time are reciprocally proportional to each other in my case.
It is special because, alongside all the new releases, it actually seems to have fallen out of time, but not because it comes along old-fashioned, but because it so pleasantly stands out from the banal, pleasing uniform trend, whose impulses also thrive in the perfume laboratory of the time-honoured fashion house. Cristalle is not a difficult fragrance, it does not have the opulent, finely differentiated noblesse of many Exclusifs, but is unadorned beautiful, unobtrusive and - the best - free of any sweetness and watery powdery boredom à la N°5 L'Eau. He stands a little alone and resembles N°19 EdT. in his discreet and yet expressive lightness most likely

Cristalle is bitter like a frosty spring morning, cool like pale porcelain stone. The cold, not tangy-freshening lemon - almost metallic-clear, as if you were bowing a crystal - embeds itself in a delicate heart of hyacinth, light violet and green floral iridescent. Softer tones soften the initial austerity, the flowery centre is interwoven silvery transparent, supported by a very delicate mossy background, more airy-grey than warm dark green.
Cristalle is straightforward, straightforward and sovereign, minimally tender behind his silky veil of distance, in his whole being unapproachable, proud and determined, like these song lines - only without the pain - from the song "The Bachelor" by Patrick Wolf

"I'm not gonna marry in the fall
And I'm not gonna marry in the spring
I will never marry - marry at all
No one will wear my silver ring"

Whoever wears it walks upright, perhaps sometimes with a wistful blink, but straight ahead. Without looking back.