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Post by FeralJasmine

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In my last column I talked about my current obsession with realistic gardenia scents and my search for a new one now that (I can’t resist throwing this in again) the corporate jackals at Tom Ford have discontinued Velvet Gardenia, the best photorealistic gardenia fragrance ever bottled. There, now that the bashing is out of my system I can proceed more constructively.

Photo Stolen DeviantArt

While I have always loved gardenias, my obsession stems from the day after my father’s death in hospice care, when I was packing to go home and on some impulse I can’t explain broke a lot of gardenia flowers off my mother’s bush and put them in the top of my suitcase. Back home, the rush of pure scent when I opened my suitcase is something I will never forget. I think of it every time I think about gardenias, or grief, or joy. I have spent a small fortune on samples to try to duplicate that experience, and have learned a lot about how gardenia scents are put together in the process.

Fleur Blanche Ajne

My Gardenia Fetish, Part 2

Photo Stolen Fragrantica

Fragrantica gives these featured accords in one line:
Gardenia, white flowers, woody notes, fruity notes

Today’s find is Fleur Blanche, by Ajne perfumers in Carmel, California. It’s available as an oil or an extrait. I have only sampled the extrait. This is described by the maker as a pure gardenia scent, but to my nose it’s a complex walk through a garden of white flowers. The open is pure lovely jasmine. Clouds of jasmine, indolic enough to make this a complete sensual experience. You pause under the jasmine arbor, intoxicated, your skin quivering. Slowly you drift on past tuberoses, maybe a little white rose, an orange tree blossoming in the background. And then, gradually, you realize that gardenia has emerged and taken over. Not a fleshly gardenia with its faintly fungal undertone of the earth from which it sprung, but a dream-gardenia, floating above its origin. The very earthly beginning comes to an angelic conclusion.
The garden of white flowers is the primal garden, the origin and center, the place where Goddess meets God or two gods or two goddesses merge and everything else ceases to matter and love begins anew. We may never completely enter it, mundane concerns may seem to shut us out of it, but stand at the threshold and sniff and, if you don’t exactly enter that shimmering world, surely you will be lifted out of your own for a while.

Photo Stolen juantiagues  Flickr

As with any other blissfully sensual experience, choose your occasion. These scents are not for the office, unless your office is a lot more liberal than mine.

Further reading: ScentHive and That Smell
Ajne has Fleur Blanc from $40/15ml Roll On Oil to $195/30ml Parfum Spray

Ajne makes a lot of other interesting 100% natural and organic oils that I’m happily testing my way through. The oils can be shipped anywhere. They do have a special permit to ship the extraits overseas, but it’s expensive. It might be more practical if a group of friends ordered together.

FeralJasmine