Perfume review: Caligna from L’Artisan Parfumeur

calignaI’ve been wearing this newly launched summery fragrance from L’Artisan Parfumeur all through the appalling weather we’ve been having recently, in an attempt to lift my spirits and pretend I’m in a warm bubble of summer (or spring, at least). The fragrance is  good, but not THAT good and I remain miserably cold, although short of an unexpected trip to the Caribbean I’m not sure anything could have helped shift the weather-gloom.

This new scent, Caligna, is a treat of a summery fragrance for anyone who likes a green-ish, pine-ish slant on their florals (there’s just a waft of rosy- jasmine so it’s floral with a small f). The main ingredients are pine, oak moss, clary sage and a home-spun sounding jasmine marmalade….it’s refreshingly sunny, the brand describe it as a Provencal flirt, inspired by all those sunburnt scrubby woodland smells from the Grasse area of France mixed with jasmine, sun screen cream and resiny-sea breezes. There are strong hints of fig too, which I think you’ll like if you appreciate Diptyque’s Philosykos or the Figuier candle.

It has a soft, gentle-ness to the top notes, quite elegant and beautifully balanced, it’s quite unusual to use clary sage as an anchor to a fragrance (according to the brand), it usually has more of a supporting role, but its strong greeny muskiness stops this from being ‘ordinary’. The creator of the fragrance is a woman, Dora Baghriche-Arnaud, and I know it shouldn’t count, but I do have a soft spot for a female perfumer.  Available on the L’Artisan Parfumeur website

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