As a follow-up to my review of two Hilde Soliani fragrances, Una Tira l’Altra and Conaffetto, I’ve been sampling two more offerings from this line: Sweet Home and Il Tempo delle Mele. Both are gourmand perfumes, and both were inspired by specific chefs and dishes that left lasting impressions on Soliani’s palate and nose.
Sweet Home is an olfactory tribute to a dessert Soliani enjoyed at Lido 84, Riccaro Camanini’s restaurant overlooking Lake Garda in northern Italy…
You know the whole “scent-is-memory” thing? Sometimes I get a little tired of hearing about it, science notwithstanding. I don’t even know whether it affects me, when we’re talking strictly about perfume. A specific fragrance can remind me of people and prior scenarios involving that same fragrance, of course — Guerlain Shalimar will always remind me of a certain eccentric aunt, and patchouli oil of a dear college friend — but there’s no memory to account for my love of roses and violets or my distaste for pear or indolic jasmine notes, for example.
Food and scent and memory, on the other hand — there you’ve got me. I realized again how susceptible I am to the combination of smell, taste and storytelling when I recently sampled a few scents from niche perfumer Hilde Soliani…
I’m usually not a fan of full-on gourmand perfumes, but when I smell a good one, I can appreciate it. Hilde Soliani’s Hot Milk provides a two-course meal: a savory entree followed by dessert.
On first sniff, Hot Milk reminded me of Asian cooking, especially Thai and Indian cuisines. With its vibrant blend of delicious-smelling notes — coconut milk, chili oil and grated galangal — Hot Milk’s aromatic opening smells like the base for many wonderful Thai dishes…
tl;dr — a diet gourmand; meh.
Perfumistas as a group tend towards Guerlain-worship, and why shouldn’t they? Jicky, Shalimar, Après L’Ondée, L’Heure Bleue, Mitsouko, Chamade, Vetiver: these are excellent good reasons. But the respect accorded the Guerlain brand by perfumistas today, in 2017, continues to puzzle me. It isn’t like Guerlain hasn’t made anything worth smelling since their glory days, but my guess is that if you took all the brand’s output in the modern era (let’s say, 1990 and beyond) and you released it under some other, less illustrious brand name, that brand would get considerably less attention from avid fragrance fans…
Go ahead, perfumistas, think of all the perfumes you know with a pompom attached to the bottle. I am sure there are more — do comment! — but I could only think of four off the top of my head. Three of those are from Ariana Grande (Ari / Frankie / Sweet Like Candy) and the fourth is Annick Goutal’s latest launch, Tenue de Soirée. If Ariana Grande and Annick Goutal strike you as unexpected bedfellows, think again, because the times they are a-changing at Annick Goutal. The new buzz words are “fun, quirky and young”, and they’re looking to shake up everything from the packaging to the logo to the brand name itself. Tenue de Soirée (evening dress or evening wear) is the “bridge” between the old Annick Goutal and the new, brand-name-yet-to-be-announced. Expect to see the full results of the rebranding by 2018, and for Goutal’s existing line up to be pared down to about 20 or 25 fragrances…