Omni

You're about to take a trip without leaving the farm.
It begins at the farm where Grandpa is burning a pile of hoary leaves that didn't make the compost. They're comfrey and borage, sorrel and thistle, and the herbal smoke assaults your nose followed by the taste of bitter lettuce swirling in your palette. It blends strangely with your perfume, First by Van Cleef and Arpels. A worse combination would be hard to find.
At this stage it's, quite frankly, unpleasant. The floral joss sticks mentioned by other reviews are there in abundance, wafting the attar of the funeral pyre.

Whoosh! It's gone, you've dropped into the sultry air of the tropics, transported by a Matrix. Now you're engulfed by climbers, Mandevillea and Port St John creeper, the air treacle thick in the tropic of Capricorn. They exert their pressure on the jasmine as vines do on trellis work, insidiously twining. Passion is a boa constrictor.

The dry down is beautiful, and it needed to be after the previous two hours. Is it worth the struggle?
You must decide. Forewarned is forearmed.

Hendricks Gin and Apres La Mousson seem unlikely bedfellows but the mind of this reviewer pays homage to Passage to India, A Jewel in the Crown and a nip of W. Somerset Maugham into the bargain. There is a metholated burst at the opening and the gin kicks in. How odd that a Frenchman encapsulated the Raj in this way.
I observe the gamine eyes of the Fishing Fleet narrowing at the spiced nuances of ALM. I'm sure they wore Jicky, thick with quintessential lavender, or whatever preceded it. Come hither, said the spider to the fly, be seduced by the stunning beauty of Indian women who didn't perfume themselves with the contents of a Turkish brothel. This, surely, is what evaporated from their skin; Melon, cinnamon, and tulasi, the holy basil. Seduction of a different kind.

He's a clever man, that JCE. Only for the broadminded, this piece of history. As our summers are sub-tropical in the North I enjoy APLM at that time. This is my choice of fragrance if we eat at Thai or Indian restaurants. Note: The reference to the Fishing Fleet is the stinging name given to English women of good family sent to India to find a husband from the (single) serving officers of the Raj.

Horticulturally speaking geranium refers first to geranium macrorrhizum, the plant from which oil of geranium was first produced. Perhaps it is this that stole my heart, I adore this humble and easily grown plant. Geraniol is found in both rose and geranium oil.

I know nothing of owning Kelly handbags but I did enjoy the movie, 'Le Divorce'. I own the EDT and now the EDP after using up my sample. The execution of the leather note in the EDP is one of gardening gloves and I am left wondering if Hermes make such a thing.

Russell Page wrote a book entitled the Education of a Gardener. Jean Claude Ellena has written the Education of a Perfume Addict in the notes of Kelly Caleche.

Be still my beating heart, I love this fragrance in spite of its inability to cope with humidity. I don't think I will ever be without it.

There's a perilous moment where the EDP could lurch into an imitation of oxalis, i.e. onion weed, but it does avert it. The Elena grapefruit could see you pucker your cheeks for a short time but stay with her, at the drydown this is rose petal surrender, Cuisse de Nymph.

Domininque Francon would have worn this. She would have thrown the bottle down the airconditioning shaft to smash into a thousand little pieces because it was too beautiful for others to know. Sigh...and sigh again.
Note: The obscure reference is to the seminal work of Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

My partner doesn't like it on me. That's a statement of fact, not anything to be swayed by. Is this the ultimate Terminator perfume? Is there an inner Sarah Connor to me?... don't think so. But, my friends, there it is, the machine and the human, all rolled into one staggeringly discombobulated scent. Fight or flight? There's the lumbering backdrop of CRC, the constant feeling of pursuit, the roar of the engine, all leavened by the vanillac loss of innocence. Bvlgari Black, the Terminator. It's pure Science Fiction. Total Recall. Heinlein, Niven, Pournelle, McCaffery, Le Quin, Feist, Tolkien, C.S. Lewis. I get the vibe. There will be days like these, we are told. I will wear Bvlgari Black

I am not capable of writing an objective review of the Bal, having worn it since 1978. Why do we love sausages and mashed potatoes when nouvelle cuisine or pacific rim is au courant? The hippocampus is to blame of course, we lay down memories with our sense of smell and this explains why we remember the end of the golden weather when our Dad wore Old Spice and our Mothers wore Tweed. Even though I embrace change and try to keep up with technology there is always that sweetest tabu, the nostalgic link to the best of times, the worst of times. My head swivels to the waft of Aramis Devin or Chanel 19 because only a very definite personality type wears such. In other reviews I explain why I loved Ma Griffe, Weil de Weil, Shocking and Chanel No 5. I obtained them by roadkill. Bal a Versailles walked in to my life in 1978. It was wearing a slightly built, androdynous woman and I was shocked by the juxtaposition. After all, Joan Collins, Elizabeth Taylor and Her Majesty were followers of the original. Today I would wear Terre d'Hermes and wouldn't bat an eyelid at a man wearing Bal a Versailles (Michael Jackson did) or Cabaret. It seemed strange then but she certainly had me thinking. After working with the perfume and the woman for some time I began to harbour the possibility, what reaction this pelt might have with my body chemistry? I wasn't brave enough until our employment diverged and I discovered that I wore it and not the other way round.

It lives in that dark place between the shadow and the soul, the perfume of a heartbreak, a computer chip of responses. Pure perfume is the only way to go