“Anais Anais” opens on a super-fresh, chewy white rush of orange flower indoles, immediately followed by a jasmine and lily combo. This is the starchy, strong, floral aspect of “Anais Anais”; the part that often resembles high quality, triple-milled soap, to my nose. It’s definitely a French soap cake, not a bar of “Dial” although it could be thought somewhere in the direction of “Dove” soap. I like this part of the blend, but I like it because I apply “Anais Anais” sparingly – one spritz on one wrist, and then the wrist makes its rounds about my neck and my other wrist. Spraying this on liberally would be the height of oppression. It would suck the air out of my lungs. The top is layer upon layer of fresh, white, creamy florals, with a hint of powder.
The white flowers ease and then the sheer, watery-metallic hyacinth and lily of the valley stage emerges. If you want a genuine, just showered smell – not super sudsy or sanitized, but the smell of soap that has just been rinsed from your skin, leaving behind an ash and floral residue – hyacinth is your note. It has a viscous, oily freshness that’s almost rounded in how it moves over your passages. It’s almost like a mix between burled wood, iris and moss, if that mix were impressions made out of metals.
Finally, the creamy white florals, dewy hyacinth and lily of the valley, subside and a smooth, fuzzy wood note is noticable. Something polished and sweet like a treated horse saddle emerges and the horse saddle mixes with sawdust and a lavender incense, touched with hints of nutmeg and clove – which could be an addition of spice or just a quality of the carnation, a note that can sometimes resemble a creamy clove blend.
What I love about Cacharel, is how bravely perfumey and brazenly sensual their fragrances are. They routinely blow raspberries at trends and will only offer their own sultrier interpretations of them – complete with Cacharel coziness and leisurely pace -- even making some blends that are defiantly antiquated. “Anais Anais”, as beautiful as it is, has that homey, out of time quality; could almost be the scent inside a well-worn wardrobe; cedar drawers, scented papers, linens embedded with sebum, some hard soaps in the corners, the whole piece vaguely scented of a lived-in home. It has this leisurely haziness to it that inspires naps in the afternoon; the hyacinth makes it sleepy and refreshing at the same time.
I love this stuff. It melds perfectly with my skin, a natural match, and feels like my own, natural skinmusk emerging from shower-clean skin. It smells familiar and nostalgic. There must’ve been someone – or entire groups of someones – who wore this scent in my infancy. It just gives the impression of long, lost dreams and cozy memories. I’ll keep searching my brain, with the help of “Anais Anais”, until I find them…
May
16
2012