In her preface to Perfumes: The A-Z Guide, Tania Sanchez comments on the instinctive tendency of perfume consumers to opt out of scents that challenge our self-perceived identities. In her opinion, the risk-free road leads to boredom, "like obsessively matching your shirt and socks every day." To shake things up a bit, she suggests occasionally wearing the absolute opposite of what we think suits us.
I thought this was very sound advice, until I remembered that the absolute opposite of what I think suits me is a floral—any floral. Were I to accept this challenge, I’d have to find a flower I could commit to.
I found myself lured by Sanchez' take on Lalique's Flora Bella, a "sleepy little greenish violet" made interesting by icy notes of milk and helional. To a lifetime disciple of warm Spice Road orientals, Flora Bella sounded like one hell of a stretch. Yet I returned time and again to reread and ponder that oddly compelling description. The more I pondered its mystery, the more I had to experience it firsthand.
True to its icy nature, Flora Bella arrived during a snowstorm. I restrained myself from opening it immediately, figuring that if I'd married myself to this total stranger in haste, I might as well repent in leisure. But in the end, there’s only one way to test the concept of wedded bliss: get in bed.
Flora Bella’s opening -- an assertive chord of daphne and tuberose -- misled me initially into thinking this might turn out to be your regulation bridal bouquet. Then I became aware that these sweet floral notes were suspended in something crystal-clear and infinitely cold. It held them aloft and separate, preserving their scent without allowing it the slightest expansion. Flowers in an ice storm: merciless.
After an entr'acte of fresh cold cucumber and approaching snow, we launched into Scene Two: an extraordinary accord of heavy cream in a stainless steel bowl that has been placed in the freezer to chill before whipping. No extraneous flavors and very little sugar mar this milky, opalescent semifreddo. It only sweetens as it dries down, but in a taunting, deliberate sort of way-- retreating beyond your grasp even as your hunger for it grows.
Flora Bella is truly a lunar phenomenon, aloof and breathtakingly beautiful. Its glow is akin to the adularescence of moonstone, the satiny chatoyancy of polished selenite, or -- most appropriately -- the blue-gold-pink aura trapped within Lalique Sirènes glass. It stops you in your tracks like a long, cool stare from a beautiful stranger's eyes; it holds you at arm's length even as it penetrates your heart.
---------
It's been thirteen years since I wrote the above review. Yet it seems to me as though its main character has been a part of my mythical landscape for millenia. The love I bear for Flora Bella -- paired with my dependence upon its ability to neutralize all manner of the blues -- has led to a dangerous sort of complacency: Run out of Flora Bella? Impossible! There's PLENTY!
I admit I've been extravagant -- encouraged, to be sure, by my naive belief that 100 ml. is a practically inexhaustible amount of perfume. I've gone through two bottles in a decade-plus and lost count of the number of decants I've shared with friends. I've applied hundreds of extra spritzes to my own self in the blithe belief that there's tons of it left.
But there isn't. I'm on my last bottle. Last, ever-- because Flora Bella has been long discontinued. The level of perfume in it declares an unavoidable truth.
How does perfume become personified in our minds? From the very first, I have envisioned Flora Bella as a naiad: fluid, fickle, evasive. I have privately referred to her as "the mermaid perfume" and worn her on vulnerable days when I wished to absorb some measure of her alien, Aquarian untouchability. The sea-change seems to occur as readily as that which I undergo with Arabie (silent temple-keeper treading the labyrinth) or Puredistance Antonia (sacred kore joyfully gathering flowers for Persephone). This cannot just be my imagination. Whether by chance or by design, these spirits must reside in the perfume.
And like gods of old, their motives often lie beyond mortal understanding.
In the best tradition of the siren, Flora Bella will consent to remain in my company only up to a point. Eventually she must return to the sea; we both know it. One day soon, to the tune of my tear-stricken, utterly futile pleading, she will up and vanish… the path of her departure erased by the remorseless surf.
