This is wet garden loam and beautiful gardenias for about 30 seconds. After which, at first I got only grapefruit in the heart notes, which was very acrid. I've never liked grapefruit -- it smells like cat pee on me. But there's something about it that made me keep coming back in the weeks after I bought this in a blind buy. Its fizzy, unusual delicacy along with a bracingly sour, mineral quality makes me compulsively want to smell it. For me, it's a bit like wanting another candy sour.So as my head twists around this thing, I get the grapefruit combined with the herbal shiso (also called perilla leaves), and I find myself compelled to say I... really like it. It's got an interesting quality like unripe fruit--or perhaps better described like the smell of grapefruit rind, not the fruit--which all eventually calms down into the florals (jasmine, champaca, and is that maybe the return of the gardenia there after a while? I can't be sure...) and a soft base of indistinct sandalwood.
Have you ever smelled the Shiso fragrance from Roger et Gallet? If you can, you may want to try it in combination with UMdO. I think there's a discontinued Shiso fragrance from Comme des Garcon, too, but I've never smelled it. I happen to have a sample of the Roger et Gallet fragrance spray, and it helped my nose recognize the basil-ish, cilantro-ish scent of shiso and distinguish it from the cat-pee of grapefruit. That, in turn, really helped my nose get past the grapefruit rind and start appreciating the complexity and uniqueness of this scent.
Other reviews of UMdO can be found at Now Smell This, at Perfume Shrine, and at Bois de Jasmin, among others!
Image courtesy of zigmasolutionse.com
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