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Spring Notes: Lily of the Valley - Muguet... & Dior {Scented Thoughts} {Fresh Notebook - Green Floral Freshness}
Lily of the valley by BranchDesign
The smell of muguet (Convallaria majalis), or lily of the valley in English which has also retained the French word, especially in the field of perfumery (and it must smell even better and more refined if you say it in French, no doubt), is instantly delightful, delicate and Fresh, with a capital letter. The scent of a little sprig of muguet evokes by its own self without any exertion of the imagination whatsoever the woodland and the cool of the forest. When closing your eyes, the aroma bespeaks of damp grass and sitting sessions ending with clothing moist by an over-application of dew and patterned with water-rings.
When you further smell lily of the valley, you have to realize that it is really a miraculous kind of freshness compared to the sizes of the shapely little bells. If you approach your nose close to the flowers, it suddenly feels as if it had entered halfway inside a refrigerator and next, that your nostrils and the tip of your nose just turned into ice. Those slender blooms are like mini air-conditioners working at the maximum of their power with no perceptible sound of a motor humming. How can something smell so fresh? Isn't it also rather that they create a micro-climate of freshness around them and then send out all the atmospheric cues of re-processed air to our noses?
A lily of the valley smells is this paradox: it smells as fresh and glacial as blue spearmint without smelling minty at all...
Lily of the valleys by Stefan Söderström
The scent of muguet/lily of the valley is unique and this is no advertising blurb to my mind. Muguet just smells of muguet in all of its rather linear character. Unlike a number of other flowers that present at some point a shade in their olfactory personalities that can make them be confused for a moment with another flower (if you were blind or closing your eyes), say, like lily compared to ylang-ylang, or peony compared to rose, (the richer ylang and rose contain lily and peony respectively, but not the reverse; this is why lily can be used as a natural enhancing pairing with ylang like in Vanille Galante, or peony with rose), muguet is much more linear and, again, offers a unique balance.
It is a floral scent with green, airy, fruity and citrusy facets, all very discreet. Its indolic notes, i.e., its sexual signal is one of the most refined in the kingdom of flowers: this flower seduces while remaining dressed, never suggesting any naked body and barely any flashes of the skin. Its scent of attraction is very lightly sweet and heady and always mingled with clear-headed citruses. A slight sexy raspy tone can be heard, but more like a cool whisper or the murmur of a brook than a sultry voice. The headiness of muguet is real but minutely dosed; it only suggests a spirit of fatal seduction, like a claw that remains half-sheathed. Smelling a potted lily of the valley is a slightly different experience and one can then catch that more markedly musky facet that gave its name to the plant.
I like to think that it is maybe due to this civilized approach that Christian Dior
had elected lily of the valley as his favorite flower and his fetish. For a couturier,
it is only fitting to imagine woman as flower and as seductress
wearing the insigna of clad refinement and only half-bared flesh. A painter like Gauguin might have preferred a more
heavily sensual and carnal flower to symbolize his world, but a couturier who is a couturier to the tip
of his fingers would appreciate that suggestion of restrained, covered-up sensuality that
lily of the valley betrays. 
Contemplating further the graceful little
bells, I cannot help but notice how well they must have symbolized the
New Look silhouette for Dior: a wasp waist, ample, corolla-like hips in
a flow of white material, the natural curly limit of a hem evoking for Dior his obsession with length: shorter or longer, to pull up a bit or not? The tepals of muguet retract overtime; some droop more, some are perkier. They seem to hesitate and follow their own whim. The flowers have moreover, one has to recognize, a perfectly tailored look about them and even seem to be made of molded plastic in their infallible perfection, or to remain in the Dior universe, appear to be completely starched or worn as if tightly pulled on rigid tulle petticoats. Lily of the valleys look like jewels, embroideries, reclining feminine heads, drooping shoulders or cinched skirts. They are stylish.
Up next a review of Diorissimo, the reformulated version, a lily of the valley perfume for the annals of history.
Dior photo credits: rfi.fr; vintageconnection.net
Previous Posts in Scented Thoughts:
Best Unique-Smelling Perfumes for a Unique You on Days Like Valentine's Day: Part 1
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Comments
I adore Lily of the Valley, I am even trying to establish it in my garden here near Santa Barbara, I may be asking to much, after all I can grow so many subtropical things here I shouldn't be greedy, but it reminds me of my youth in the north.
I have a vintage bottle of Diorissimo, and a recent EDT, they are different!
Both good though....
Posted by: Eric | April 26, 2009
My grandma used to grow these delicate flowers and i find their scent so beautiful and nostalgic. When was Diorissimo reformulated and how true to the flower is this scent?
Posted by: anna | April 27, 2009
I am not sure about the reformulation date, but it happened sometimes after 2000 and maybe as recently as in the last 2 years or year. The new Diorissimo...well, how about I keep the suspense up a little longer? I am planning on posting about it soon and am gathering my final thoughts ;)
Posted by: Marie-Helene Wagner | April 28, 2009
Eric,
Sorry, I missed your comment the last time around.
I'm not sure about the new Diorissimo...at first I thought like you did that it was different but just fine, but then my thoughts evolved on that.
Dior have told me they were going to get back to me about the new formulation...let's see...
Posted by: Marie-Helene | April 30, 2009