Fresh, bright, blooming beautiful bouquet!

Oh my freshness.. this is a blooming beautiful bouquet!!

To understand this perfume, you firstly need to understand what the flower of a Daphne plant smells like. This semi-evergreen shrub flowers in late winter/early spring and has a beautiful intoxicating aroma that can scent an entire garden. I have a compact Daphne Blafra in my garden that’s native to the UK and Ireland. It’s small, with white, pink flushed flowers and smells amazing. If you’ve never smelt Daphne before, these intensely fragrant blooms draw your nose is as you try to identify the aroma. It’s easier to say “Well, Daphne smells like Daphne”, but to try and describe it; well, it’s a unique and unforgettable fragrance but it also has a familiarity about it as your nose identifies different profiles that remind you of other flowers. It’s like a sweet but bright floral mix of rose, jasmine, honeysuckle and orange blossom but with a spicy hint of zesty ginger, white sugar and creamy lemon.

And it’s captured beautifully in this perfume with Penhaligon’s Daphne flower accord.

It opens with a bright, green, floral fresh announcement. To my nose, the cassis keeps the Daphne vibrant and super fresh but like it’s just been picked from the garden.

It’s a pretty linear scent but as it moves into the heart , the sweetness of the Daphne becomes more noticeable as the cassis settles. Just like the Daphne flower, your nose starts to think “rose, no jasmine, no orange blossom”. But it’s not a heady mix, it really is so fresh and bright. The moss is perfectly used to keep the freshness ongoing. This isn’t oakmoss with an earthy woodiness. Penhaligon’s have selected the freshest moss that has just received an April shower. This is clean, reviving, crisp and green and settles into a dry down of a high quality Daphne bouquet of fresh cut flowers of sweet, but not too sweet, bright, ever so slightly spicy, green floral, a tiny hint of powder and creaminess. It’s so elegant and enchanting but it is also fresh, fresh, fresh, it makes my eyes pop!

This was a love at first whiff the minute I got my nose on it. It is a super fresh, enchanting summer floral, beautifully and artfully blended and it’s Daphne done really, really well. Love.