Perfumer: Jean-Claude Ellena
Can a perfume be both dry and fruity, without smelling like dried fruit? Surprisingly, the answer is “yes”, as in the case of Un Jardin Sur Le Nil, a study of green mangoes growing in a garden along the Nile.
There is a flash of gratefruit on initial application, leading to a definitive acetone (nail polish remover) edge to the green fruitiness, which makes the mangoes seem alive and not dessicated, still perfectly capable of making one’s tongue raw with their juicy flesh. And yet, there is an all encompassing dusty dryness to the fragrance, suggesting a small oasis of garden vegetables and fruits surrounded immediately with an expanse of sun-baked earth. There’s a pithiness, like the spongy dry side of a fruit rind, or like the fibrous mango pit, which combined with the green, and the dust, gives this perfume a very unique personality. Green without being fresh, and dry with contrasting cool and warm tones.
When places and the people and things in them are really, REALLY hot, time slows down. I feel that slowing of time in Sur Le Nil. Balanced on a knife’s edge between merely relaxed and melancholy. Maybe wistful.
It’s the sensation of not being responsible for anything except appreciating the present moment. When it settles down into a skin scent, I smell gently ripened as if I have been out in the Sun all day.
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