Matriarch

A favorite of mine over the past twenty years, I've gone through too many bottles of this sweet juice to count! It's a shame that it has been reformulated and has lost a measure of lushness and oomph. (Still worth owning, but buy a vintage bottle with a gold cap if you can find one.)

In my opinion, Elizabeth Taylor's White Diamonds was designed to emulate this exquisite fragrance....there are too many similarities for it be a coincidence and it came out 7 years later than Ysatis so it is possible. I can imagine ET falling in love with this somewhat pricey Givenchy scent and creating White Diamonds as a less costly version that could be afforded by the average woman.

I was surprised to see that Hope was not listed among the fragrances already reviewed, so for my first review, I will start at the beginning....for me at least. It was the summer of 1987; the summer of Mario, my first "official" boyfriend(that wasn't a boy from school). He was older than me by several years and had a sporty car which he liked to drive very fast. Racing out to the fairgrounds with the music playing loudly, I felt so free and so grown up. Of course this beautiful fragrance brings me right back to that moment in time- a hot summer night filled with hope, blossoming love and carefree laughter.

Hope is still in production but has been reformulated. If you can find a vintage bottle, snag it! It's floral and spicy with a powdery, yet sophisticated dry down. Probably best classified as a floriental. I have never smelled another scent quite like it, and I will keep it in my collection until the day I die.