Delina by Parfums De Marly

/ AustralianPerfumeJunkies

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Narth

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Hello friends, it’s Narth here in a bit of a pink quandary! Since it was released in 2017 to glorious praise I’ve wanted to try Parfums De Marly Delina. Not because of the glorious praise, we know that can be a cyclic thing in perfume land, but because of the glorious PINK. The opaque bottle is the most beautiful colour, a confectionery pinkness that draws the eye and the hand. It’s the exact colour I aimed for and achieved when I squeezed a couple drops of red food dye into a tub of Betty Crocker frosting for my Betty Crocker frosting high tea sandwiches (fluffy white bread, cut off crusts, spatula on the frosting). These weren’t exactly a success but they looked very pretty and that’s how I feel about Parfums De Marly Delina

Parfums De Marly Delina 2017: A Tale of Many Pinks

Quentin Bisch

Top: Bergamot, Lychee, Rhubarb, Nutmeg,
Middle: Turkish Rose, Peony, Petalia, Vanilla and Musk
Base: Cashmeran, Haitian Vetiver, Cedar and Incense

It took me some time to track this scent down. The one store stocking it never had the tester, though they always had a completely different tester bottle in front of the Delina box. For months it would go like this;

Narth: Would you happen to have the Delina in a tester?
SA: Yes it is right here.
Narth: No that’s Cassili, the Delina is pink.
SA: Oh I don’t think so..

Google ensues

SA: Well I guess someone stole it.

I walk through this shop enroute regularly and this weird conversation kept happening and still no pink, no very very mouthwatering Parfums De Marly Delina. But then one day, and you’d have to be Australian to appreciate how this signifies the heavens opening and the trumpets trumpeting, the SA said “oh I think we have a sample” and pressed one into my hand. YES! I couldn’t wait to get home and have it be Pinkness time!

Well just like my pretty sandwiches it didn’t deliver, I think it may even be as yucky as I secretly knew my sandwiches were.

We have rhubarb, we have custard apple, we have custard.. yes for maybe 5 seconds this is quite enchanting. And then the sharpness comes out. I’d like to say tartness but tartness is tasty and this is more a synthetic sharpness pretending to be tartness. And it’s nuclear. Couldn’t scrub it off in the shower. I was quite upset! In the end it’s a screechy mess.

I am THE person marketing and advertisements and stories and bottles are made for, I lie back before the marketing gods and wait to be influenced. That pink lettering on the Fracas bottle? That’s what Fracas smells like to me forever. Parfums de Marley Delina still smells pink, but it’s a bad pink. It’s a harsh pink. It’s the pink of a kitchen cleanser from the 60’s.

I am truly happy for those of you who love this, you have a beautiful bottle and I am sure Parfums De Marly Delina is a creamy goddess on you!

I want to hear your stories when all your untested fantasies didn’t deliver! What was your biggest disappointment?

Bye for now, Narth xx

15 thoughts on “Delina by Parfums De Marly”

  2. Can’t think of a disappointment at the moment but I know it’s happened to me too. But I will say that I love that bottle too!! I could see how you would be be swayed 😉

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  3. I completely agree on Delina and love your fun story about it. Cassili is a *no* too. It has a similar feel to Delina.
    My recent biggest disappointment is HG Luster. I expected it would be The Rose for me. I couldn’t wait to try it. The reviews were wonderful. What I smelled was something very very sour. The rose was somewhere behind the overwhelming sourness. Awful. On the bright side, now I know what people talk about when they say a rose perfume smells sour. 😉

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    • Wow, have yet to try Luster but I am always ready to find yet another holy rose grail. There have been so many. I will remember your sour review when I do test it. I’ve had a problem with Amouage’s smelling sour to me more often than not though oddly their rose Lyric Woman is one of the few that doesn’t. Luca Turin is always describing things as a “sour floral” and that’s all he has to say about it lol.

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  4. I don’t like Delina either, in fact none of the PdM scents appeal to me.

    My most unsuccessful blind buy was MFK 540 Baccarat Rouge. The hype was enormous when it launched, it was vaunted as sweet, musky, magical, instant compliment-getter, etc. Confident this was going to be fantastic, I ordered it unsniffed. When I got it I sprayed an oil slick on my arm and waited for the joyous rapture… which never came. I smelled… nothing. Totally anosmic to whatever it is made of. Had to resell it immediately after trying it twice with the same result. And you know it wasn’t cheap. No more expensive blind buys for me.

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    • Wow, I’ve not had that anosmic response for many years. Very interesting. I’ve never fully tested MFK540 because it’s always been too sweet and fluffy for me. I do intend to one day try and figure out why it’s considered special but I’ll have to wait until I have a sample at home. So many things to try when at the shops and the sweet and fluffies don’t get a look in. Probably missing some greats because of that. And yeah the reputation for MFK540 is such that it would seem to be a successful blind buy 😦

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  5. Thank you for the good laugh Narth! It has definitely happened to me. I daren’t say which recent perfume here for fear of being mobbed with hate mail. Haha!
    Wishing you a safe and joyful holiday season.
    Sandra xo

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  6. I must confess here that I have completely boycotted brands like Parfums de Marly, Initio, Xerjoff, Roja Dove, and Terenzi etc. I just do not take them seriously because I view them as clone brands that are entirely commercial ventures. Now I am not saying business is not important because brands like Malle and Lutens want to make money, too. But Monsieur Malle and Monsieur Lutens had a passion for perfume and they mixed that with business. However, the brands I mentioned above are all about marketing. They might come with a novel perfume once in a while but most of the time, they simply re-hash old ideas. Case in study, MFK came with BR540 and it has been a sleeper hit. guess what, it has been cloned by Marly, Initio (Initio and Marly have same owner) and Terenzi already. BTW, Terenzi claims to be a perfumer but there is no way in hell he is a perfumer. He plays “pretend to be a perfumer”, just like Roja Dove and Sergio Momo of Xerjoff.

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    • I feel I don’t know enough about those actual perfumers to say in this case. I believe the whole everything-is-niche trend has resulted in a lot of uninspired and derivative offerings at a very high price. There’s also been some treasures in there, but the houses where I could blind buy knowing it will be wonderful, if not personally to me to others, are mostly older ones.

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