Spring! Jonquils! New beginnings!
Clichés.
The fragrance world is full of them; storytelling, smoke and mirrors, a scent that somehow tries, successfully or not, to tell a tale whether its Mills and Boon or Baudelaire.
Jo Malone is the queen of spinning these smell stories on their heads. Every year the British house releases a limited edition collection and in 2015 it’s Rock The Ages, with five slender slender vials attempting to evoke a bodice-ripping period of England past. Lily of the Valley & Ivy should teleport us to a Georgian Jane Austen novel: meadows, manors and manners. Pastel gowns and politeness.
And god damn, it kind of does.
But in the genius way Malone has of rendering these clichés, Lily of the Valley & Ivy sparkles with pink grapefruit and blackcurrant as well as musk and amber, as fresh as a flower. It’s unassuming and quite direct, but again, like the beauty of a simple spring bloom, there’s quite an English charm in that. Now, where are those golden daffodils…
