06/23/2020
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The beautiful Minimitin
The world of perfume can be very cruel and very fast-moving, and so it is that this wonderfully graceful fragrance, the one with which this brand once opened its range, is only ten years old, but already past the world of medieval monasteries.
"Le Couvent", i.e. "the convent" (a word shimmering in its meaning, but which usually means the dwelling or meeting house of the monks or nuns in a convent, or the convent itself), a French brand, was puffing away from 2010 to 2017 and released about one fragrance a year. The fragrances all had a little bit of a monastery about them: simple bottles, old labels and monastic and Christian names like Mission Water (for an oriental, gourmand scent) or Matutin Water, or even Paulaner Water (this one). Of course, this was already apparent back then, but with such beautiful scents like this one I like to spread the cloak of Christian charity over it. I don't know any brochures or websites of this old convent, but they were probably written in Carolingian minuscule.
In 2018, for reasons unknown to me, the hard break came: all fragrances released up to that point were discontinued and instead, within just three years, almost thirty new ones were launched in three series. The design of the flacons is now hip, Mr. Ellena is the olfactory director of a large team of perfumers, and the Christian references in the (new) fragrance names and in the company's saga have been reduced to a minimum. The new convention now interprets itself in this way: The brand is dedicated to the memory of a French world traveller and botanist who lived near Le Couvent des Minimes (or rather near the Pauline Convent, for which it is not entirely clear whether a village is named after the historic convent that still stands today). All right. Actually, I prefer a fake monastery brand almost more than such religiously overcorrect year-end greetings. Ahja, which company (today at least) is behind Le Couvent, I did not find out, the distribution should be done by the toothpaste tzars of Colgate-Palmolive.
Eau des Minimes is a lovely, wonderfully simple, infinitely harmonious, innocent-looking but nevertheless quite complex composition of three sixths of citric, two sixths of lush greens and one sixth of pretty, soft, delicate meadow flowers. The citric is dominant but not impertinent; it is the mildest and most peaceful lemon in the world; if you dab the fragrance on, instead of spraying it, you perceive a pacifist grapefruit. Despite the rosemary indicated in the fragrance sheet, I perceive the green part less as herbaceous than as grassy, leafy and vegetable. The pansies speak for themselves, or we simply look at them with delight. It should also be mentioned that not only the little pretentious ingredient mallow is used here, but also burdock, which has become known not only as a model for hook and loop fasteners, but also as a poisonous and, above all, a multiply used medicinal plant. This is something special because Eau des Minimes is the only fragrance among the 150,000 or so scents in the Parfumo database - or to be more precise: was! - that contains this ingredient.
Eau de Minimes for me is the scent of the hermitage vegetable garden surrounded by Mediterranean citrus groves (with a few flowers in it as a tribute to beauty) of a (naturally beautiful) Minimitin hermit whose moment you catch a glimpse of as you walk by. It is formally declared as cologne, but I don't consider it typical of colognes because of its strong moist green component, which reminds me a bit of Sisley's Eau de Camapagne, so I comment on it outside my cologne series. I perceive its durability more than most of the people here: a good four hours of skin-tightness.
Murder Bee is thanked many times for allowing me to get to know this scent relic and congratulations to the 51 listed owners of a bottle. Keep this treasure in honour, though not in the honour of the altars.
Since I write under the alias of a religious and have been described here as an "infotainment" expert before, I want to add the following (thanks in this respect not only to Wikipedia, but also to Johanna Lanczkowski's "Kleines Lexikon des Mönchtums") Francis of Paola, who lived in Italy in the late Middle Ages, was supposed to become a Franciscan friar according to the will of his parents, but he felt repelled by the wealth of this order, which had actually committed itself to special poverty and humility (hence also Minorites or Friars Minor, i.e. the smaller, poorer, lesser ones). He therefore founded his own order, which became known in the Italian and French-speaking areas as Minimen (the very young, very poor, very low) and in German as Paulaner (after the birthplace of the founder), and whose specialities were the high value of the eremitic life in insecretions away from the monasteries and the extremely meagre and purely vegan diet. It is possible, however, that these ideals may soon have been interpreted in a more pragmatic way, because the convent after which this brand is named (and which now houses a wellness palace) looks quite splendid, and Paulaner beer is not spring water. The (always weakly pronounced) female branch of the order are the Minimitinnen. And of the entire order, which was almost extinguished in the French Revolution, only remnants are said to exist today somewhere in Spain and South America.
Remnants, like that scent...
"Le Couvent", i.e. "the convent" (a word shimmering in its meaning, but which usually means the dwelling or meeting house of the monks or nuns in a convent, or the convent itself), a French brand, was puffing away from 2010 to 2017 and released about one fragrance a year. The fragrances all had a little bit of a monastery about them: simple bottles, old labels and monastic and Christian names like Mission Water (for an oriental, gourmand scent) or Matutin Water, or even Paulaner Water (this one). Of course, this was already apparent back then, but with such beautiful scents like this one I like to spread the cloak of Christian charity over it. I don't know any brochures or websites of this old convent, but they were probably written in Carolingian minuscule.
In 2018, for reasons unknown to me, the hard break came: all fragrances released up to that point were discontinued and instead, within just three years, almost thirty new ones were launched in three series. The design of the flacons is now hip, Mr. Ellena is the olfactory director of a large team of perfumers, and the Christian references in the (new) fragrance names and in the company's saga have been reduced to a minimum. The new convention now interprets itself in this way: The brand is dedicated to the memory of a French world traveller and botanist who lived near Le Couvent des Minimes (or rather near the Pauline Convent, for which it is not entirely clear whether a village is named after the historic convent that still stands today). All right. Actually, I prefer a fake monastery brand almost more than such religiously overcorrect year-end greetings. Ahja, which company (today at least) is behind Le Couvent, I did not find out, the distribution should be done by the toothpaste tzars of Colgate-Palmolive.
Eau des Minimes is a lovely, wonderfully simple, infinitely harmonious, innocent-looking but nevertheless quite complex composition of three sixths of citric, two sixths of lush greens and one sixth of pretty, soft, delicate meadow flowers. The citric is dominant but not impertinent; it is the mildest and most peaceful lemon in the world; if you dab the fragrance on, instead of spraying it, you perceive a pacifist grapefruit. Despite the rosemary indicated in the fragrance sheet, I perceive the green part less as herbaceous than as grassy, leafy and vegetable. The pansies speak for themselves, or we simply look at them with delight. It should also be mentioned that not only the little pretentious ingredient mallow is used here, but also burdock, which has become known not only as a model for hook and loop fasteners, but also as a poisonous and, above all, a multiply used medicinal plant. This is something special because Eau des Minimes is the only fragrance among the 150,000 or so scents in the Parfumo database - or to be more precise: was! - that contains this ingredient.
Eau de Minimes for me is the scent of the hermitage vegetable garden surrounded by Mediterranean citrus groves (with a few flowers in it as a tribute to beauty) of a (naturally beautiful) Minimitin hermit whose moment you catch a glimpse of as you walk by. It is formally declared as cologne, but I don't consider it typical of colognes because of its strong moist green component, which reminds me a bit of Sisley's Eau de Camapagne, so I comment on it outside my cologne series. I perceive its durability more than most of the people here: a good four hours of skin-tightness.
Murder Bee is thanked many times for allowing me to get to know this scent relic and congratulations to the 51 listed owners of a bottle. Keep this treasure in honour, though not in the honour of the altars.
Since I write under the alias of a religious and have been described here as an "infotainment" expert before, I want to add the following (thanks in this respect not only to Wikipedia, but also to Johanna Lanczkowski's "Kleines Lexikon des Mönchtums") Francis of Paola, who lived in Italy in the late Middle Ages, was supposed to become a Franciscan friar according to the will of his parents, but he felt repelled by the wealth of this order, which had actually committed itself to special poverty and humility (hence also Minorites or Friars Minor, i.e. the smaller, poorer, lesser ones). He therefore founded his own order, which became known in the Italian and French-speaking areas as Minimen (the very young, very poor, very low) and in German as Paulaner (after the birthplace of the founder), and whose specialities were the high value of the eremitic life in insecretions away from the monasteries and the extremely meagre and purely vegan diet. It is possible, however, that these ideals may soon have been interpreted in a more pragmatic way, because the convent after which this brand is named (and which now houses a wellness palace) looks quite splendid, and Paulaner beer is not spring water. The (always weakly pronounced) female branch of the order are the Minimitinnen. And of the entire order, which was almost extinguished in the French Revolution, only remnants are said to exist today somewhere in Spain and South America.
Remnants, like that scent...
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