Monday, March 06, 2006

Après l'Ondée

Rain shower may leave a trail of scent behind, or may draw an invisible curtain hanging in the air; suddenly brightening the spirits and reviviving the thirsty plants and soil. Suddenly, one becomes aware of the possibility of other realities, of luscious greens and patience and calm. After the first rain in the dry lands, the earth releases a special scent emitted by the myriads of organisms inhabiting the upper layer of the soil – a musty and clean scent of wet earth. However, in places blessed with rain all year around, those scents are less than evident except for those times when the earth had enough time to dry and lust for water.

When I first heard of Après l'Ondée, I was longing to try it and could not find a trace of it anywhere until a few years later. However, I was so fascinated by the idea of it, that I immediately set to design a perfume as an homage to the scent after the first rain in my home village. The result was Rainforest – ironically a scent that is more similar to the rainforests of the West Coast, the exile in which rain bares no precious values. Nevertheless, it gives on the feeling of a veil that have been lifted after the first rain to reveal life and hope, while also portraying the wild greenness of the West Coast rainforests.

Après l'Ondée paints a completely different post-rain olfaction scenery, one that was for the most part foreign to me, until I traveled to countries where rain showers appear uninvited in the midst of summer, shuttering the delicate and fluffy blossoms of tiny purple flowers. Après l'Ondée is shy and quiet, like the cyclamen flowers hiding in the hollows of grey rocks, as if to escape the raging thunder storm.

The cool and distant powderiness of orris and violet is soft and obscure, warmed by anise and carnation, and underlined with a quiet resonance of jasmine and subtle vanillic accord – like a dreamy summer-stroll along the dusty paths of a flower garden that suddenly was given away to a gently showering overcast, a reminder of the intimate closeness between beauty and melancholy.

Top notes:
Bergamot, Aniseed

Heart notes:
Violet flower, Jasmine, Rose, Carnation

Base notes:
Iris roots, Vanilla, Heliotrope

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1 Comments:

At August 28, 2008 2:25 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Did you have the luck to smell it in the "perfume" form ? And can you compare it to the EDT ?

I only smelled the EDT. It's one of my favorite perfume. At the beginning I was tryng to catch the violett, anis. Sometimes I smell a huge of something like neroli.
Now I realise I don't ask me anymore question, I tell me "après l'ondée is après l'ondée", a bit like when you wrote that "chamade is chamade" (chamade is my favorite), I love this sentence as if there were low perfume meant to be depicted, and wonderfull fragrance meant to be enjoyed.

To get back the the extrait of "après l'ondée", this now unavalaible concentration form seems to be the saint graal for some ebayer, that keep on killing each other for one bottle (550$ *ikk* :o )
At worse, I'm gonna smell it at the "osmotheque" at Versailles, they have it.

"Apres l'ondee" is as well know to have been once selled in a "pure" form, with no dillution.

So I'm still longuing for AP in the extrait form, my intuition tell me the EDT don't do it justice.

 

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