Areej Le Doré Koh-i-Noor

The Koh-i-Noor, “mountain of light” in Persian, is one of the largest and most famous diamonds in the world, part of the British Crown Jewels, and a glittering focus of the opulent Queen Mary’s Crown. It is also the name of Areej Le Doré‘s latest parfum, a floral oriental with a heart of lush, indolic flowers, radiating white, yellow, and gold, against a velvety backdrop of golden amber, Mysore sandalwood, citrus, deer musk, and oud.

Left: the Koh-i-Noor in the front cross of Queen Mary’s Crown. Source: Wikipedia. Right: Koh-i-Noor parfum. Source: Areej Le Doré. Collage: my own.

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Bogue Gardelia: Vintage Luxury Reborn

Photo: Jerry Uelsmann," Untitled, [Reclining nude Woman, River waterfall and Yosemite Landscape], 1992," Telluride Gallery. (Direct link to his website embedded within.)

Photo: Jerry Uelsmann,” Untitled, [Reclining nude Woman, River waterfall and Yosemite Landscape], 1992,” Telluride Gallery. (Direct link to his website embedded within.)

Gardelia by Antonio Gardoni of Bogue Perfumes is a remarkable fragrance. An opulent, baroque, and complex symphony of notes that deluge the senses, evoking the very best of the vintage chypre style, and so much more as well. Animalic, lush, tropical, floral, vegetal, mossy, resinous, furry, musky, and indolic elements shine in pitch-perfect balance within a prismatic kaleidoscope that clearly nods to Gardoni’s famous MAAI, but also to vintage Mitsouko parfum, albeit a Mitsouko that is given a tuberose and gardenia twist. It’s like stumbling upon an unexpected nook of hot-house flowers growing deep within the recesses of a mossy, dark forest, unfolding like a furry and autumnal twist on the Rite of Spring. Roja Dove’s Mitsouko-inspired Diaghilev sought to do something similar, but that fragrance never impacted me the way Gardelia has. I think it’s superb.

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