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Portia
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Hey Fragrant Friends,
Do you have very specific Scent Memories? A place, a moment, a person? Does one spritz conjure memories even if you never had that fragrance at the time? That’s how today’s fragrance has hit me since the very first tome I smelled it.
Lys Mediterranee by Frederic Malle 2000
Lys Mediterranee by Edouard Flechier
Fragrantica gives these featured accords:
Top: Sea water, ginger
Heart: Angelica, orange blossom, lotus, lily
Base: Vanilla, musk
Salty white flowers with a frosty ginger zing. You know the evening as you leave the beach if you’re staying in a resort? The sun is going and suddenly the air gets cool. As you make your way up towards the lawns you can smell the tropical night blooming flowers. Lys Mediterranee smells luscious yet cool and aloof. I think the angelica and the water flowers all give a light wet swampiness that keeps the very tidy florist shop vibe from being too antiseptic clean. It may also be the lily, very asiatic lily stem as you cut it, or the leaves if you break them off. It’s a smell I used to love when arranging flowers.
Every time I wear Lys Mediterranee the exact same scent association pops up. A few years ago I was staying with my mate in his house on Ibiza. He taught me how to ride his moped so I hired one and we buzzed around the island. There’s a great restaurant down on the uncool side of Ibiza where all the locals gather for paella and nobody speaks English, the food costs nothing and the restaurant has a verandah built over waters that are so clean you can count the sand grains. Lys Mediterranee smells like magnificent that day but with extra added flowers.
PDI
Further reading Olfactoria’sTravels and Australian Perfume Junkies
MeccaCosmetica has $212/50ml
SurrenderToChance starts at $4/0.5ml
Do you have an Island Memory Scent? Is Lys Mediterranee a fave of yours?
See you tomorrow,
Portia xx
Australian Perfume Junkies 
Hi Portia. I have to admit I have always by passed this one. I really ought to try it. I am rather partial to Lys Soleia and it seems to be enough. But saying that, the notes for LM are different, warranting a look. Or sniff. Kxx
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Will try next time in Mecca. I have been wearing the bergamoto from calabria this week very summer citrus, for this humidity.
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Love this so much! I ended up buying Un Lys (knew I wanted a lily, they’re both very beautiful, and I may have been swayed by the bell jar) but someday I’ll have this too!
I spent a little time on Kauai and a lady who worked at the place where we stayed made us plumeria leis on our last day. I don’t remember well what they smelled like, but I remember how I loved them. It was such a lovely gesture – the tree she made the leis from was right outside our cottage.
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I like this one in the muggy dog days of summer, it reminds me of the ocean and is cool and refreshing.
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My father is/was a band-leader and master musician and we traveled a lot with him overseas, on tours and cruises, and he was often booked to bring his band to various islands for the Christmas/New Year season. One of the most intensely beautiful fragrances I’ve ever experienced was found when walking along the pathways in and around the Regent hotel (now demolished) at Denarau beach in Fiji. Fecundity at its most amazing – massively oversized ginger lilies everywhere. I’ve never smelled a ginger lily ever since then that emits the same jaw-dropping wonder. If I could find a way to bottle it, I’d be done here on Earth. Fave island fragrance is Charriol for women edp (Charriol’s Tourmaline is a close second). Floral Amber with intense amounts of Tonka. For me it conjures the smell of charcoal-grilled food, frangipanis, coconut suntan lotion, ‘shissing’ around in silk clothes, brand new duty free perfume, cocktails, rain-storms, gekkos, nightclubs and deeply felt contentment.
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Portia, thank you for this lovely review and to everyone else who has commented. I now have some summer lovelies to hunt for.
And the Lys Mediterranee sounds like summer perfection. Plus the fact that it’s created by Edouard Flechier … I’ll be on the lookout for this one.
I have never had an island or tropical holiday. This might be the next best thing.
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Hello APJ’S! I hope you are finding joy today. A few years ago I bought a particularly striking natural hand soap from my friend’s shop on clearance. It turned out to be Proper. It was the eponymous scent of an all-natural, crowd funded, start-up company. The smell was transporting. However it was not taking me to a place I knew, or could recognize. It was just the scent of the perfect early summer day. Then a year later I was hiking threough a wilflower filled meadow in Sandbanks Park in Canada on the coast of Lake Ontario with my family and I was “reverse transported” I was smelling the exact fragrance of that handsoap in the wind! I did some research and it must be the Elderflowers from the Elderberry bush. The company actually made a reasonably priced perfume of the same scent but I failed to purchase it. I did not suspect that they would go out of business! #regret I really try to make it a practice to regret things I HAVE done rather than those which I haven’t. I find it ironic that I love Saint Germain Elderberry Liquer and have a small Elderberry bush in my yard, but never made the conection until I researched. HAve fun! Alanna
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