Okay, let’s see what we have here – a jasmine soliflore. That is usually grounds for dismissal. Jasmine is loud and often indolic, and even if it is clean and whitest white, it is overbearing and acts like a diva. Jasmine for cowards is what I want and need and I found Ormonde Jayne Sampaquita to fully satisfy my every jasmine need.
But you know me, when I explore a line, I explore the line. Jasmine or not, Love and Tears, Surrender needed to be tested. And that is what I did, I wore my sample down to the last dregs and even if I am no born again jasmine fiend now, I really like Love and Tears, and I see the appeal a bit better now. I went from wondering why the heck people loved jasmine, to appreciating its beauty on myself as well as on others.
Love and Tears, Surrender is the ninth in the L’Oeuvre Noire Collection. Created by Calice Becker it includes notes of bergamot, petit grain, cypress, jasmine, orange blossom, ylang-ylang and cistus.
Love and Tears opens very green and fresh, and although the jasmine – only slightly indolic in the beginning and morphing to clean territory over time – is present and accounted for from the very beginning, the green is here to stay as well. Fresh and green at first, budding you might say, the jasmine note gets sweeter in its development, the flowers bloom, become radiant and sparkling almost, before devolving back into a deeper, mossier green in the drydown.
Love and Tears is no shy flower (pun intended), but states its presence clearly, but it manages to stay on the side of being opulent and radiant rather than verging into loud and obnoxious. If applied with restraint, sillage is above average, but perfectly acceptable for me. Wear time is excellent.
What Love and Tears does to me, was very unexpected. I find myself basking in its light. For me Love and Tears has an almost visible glowing aura, I feel like I am in my own private ray of sunlight when wearing it. Like a halo, it surrounds me and bathes me in its white light. It softens contours, it makes my vision fuzzy and my outlook mellow and benevolent. The people around me get to deal with a less stressed and less high strung person. Maybe I should read up on the aromatherapeutic benefits of jasmine, I don’t want to jinx it though.
As long as Love and Tears acts as my personal soft focus filter, I’ll enjoy it and shut up for once.
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Beautiful review for a beautiful fragrance – I like your image of a halo, it’s radiant and happy in a quiet way.
Love and Tears did a lot for me to come to terms with what my nose reads as “the soapy drydown of a jasmine perfume”.
Before that A la Nuit was a no-go, not because of the indolic opening but because of the soap fest in the end (yes, I’m weird..).
No you are not weird, at least not more than I am (which is considerable, when I think about it…), A La Nuit is an absolute no go for me, for the indoles as well as the soapiness, it is just WAY TOO MUCH ALL THE TIME. I prefer more subtlety.
A very nice review! I think Love & Tears is my favorite perfume from this collection. I’m not sure yet if I want to own it but I’ll wear happily a couple of samples that I’ve got and decide after they are gone.
What about you? You drained your sample. Is there going to be more of this perfume in your life or are you done with it?
Fate sent another sample my way, the day after I applied the last drops. I’ll wear that and then wait what fate does next… 😉
You’ve made me want to revisit this one. Out of the samples I have this is the one that captivated me the least, maybe I should give it another go 🙂
Ha, I just wrote something to that effect in my comment on your blog! So we are exchanging cravings today, are we? 😀
Love the idea of your “personal soft focus filter” and so agree about indoles being a no-no. This is at the “bigger” end of big white florals for me, on a par with Roja Dove Scandal, say, which has a similar “perfumey” vibe, but I like it very much. One notch down in “perfumeyness” would be Acqua di Parma Gelsomino to which you kindly introduced me. That is probably the perfect halo for someone of my slightly wimpier disposition.
Roja Dove’s perfumes are popping up everywhere today, now I’m really getting curious… hard to get samples of them though, sigh.
My review of Gelsomino is upcoming next week, so I’ll keep up the mystery as to how I like it a bit longer. 😉
Lovely review. It is definitely one of the jasmine perfumes I could wear. But oddly I find Sampaquita more interesting. In my opinion, By Kilian has so many other gems in his collection that I am not scrambling for a FB of this one.
It is not my first By Kilian choice as well, especially as my husband finds it too much. 😦 But I love how “expensive” it smells, I mean that the materials smell like high quality, as they very well should at the price point. With jasmine I find differences in quality especially striking.
You are right about jasmine. Natural jasmine (and one of the compounds used in perfumes that’s derived from jasmine, I forget the name!) is an antidepressant/anxiolytic! A couple pharmaceutical firms are looking to come up with some actual meds based on the compounds found in jasmine. But I prefer to wear the real thing.
-Marla
Long live the Nerd Girl! Thank you, for confirming my experience with facts, how great to know! 🙂 I think I’ll stick with the real thing as well!
I’m not a fan of jasmine, but this one I can wear easily and it effects on me positive.
It seems to be a very user-friendly jasmine. 🙂
This *is* a lovely, easy to wear jasmine perfume isn’t it? I knew you would like it. The perfume smells like natural jasmine evoking wet jasmine petals (on tip-toes), with just a touch of perfuminess to make it elegant..This is my happy fragrance- smelling it makes me happy..:) I might need a decant/travel size of this sometime in the future.
Absolutely! I love your description of jasmine on tiptoes.
This is the only By Kilian fragrance I’ve ever tried, and not being a huge fan of jasmine soliflores, I initially wasn’t swept away by it and didn’t accord it much sampling time to begin with. But today, with your review in front of me, and meeting a wonderful friend for brunch–in other words, being in a happy and receptive mood–I’m truly enjoying it. Your review is spot on, Birgit! (And I love Lavanya’s description, too, of “wet jamine petals on tip-toes.”) 🙂
I’m glad you enjoyed Love and Tears today, and I’m proud to having influenced your SotD. 😉
I enjoyed your review! I first tried Love & Tears at a moment when I was facing some real tears, and I found it serenity in a bottle.
As an aside, I love jasmine, clean and dirty, but really don’t like A La Nuit. I hate to say it ( I know it has fans ), but given all the other luscious jasmines of late, I’d be quite happy to see it shuffle from niche stardom to obscurity. I have my Love & Tears, my Nuda, my Sarrasins, my Gandhara; I’m all jasmine-d up!
I’m glad Love and Tears was helpful, when you needed it.
You seem to know your jasmines, did you try the new Tom Ford Jasmine Rouge yet?
Not yet, but I’m not terribly stoked about it, either. the initial Private Blends were big, bold, and sometimes daring but subsequent outings have been a touch milquetoast. Champaca Absolute let me down when I was expecting a big boom of floral ferocity to match Velvet Gardenia’s.
If you haven’t sampled Neil Morris’ Gandhara, give it a chance; it may sway you into liking dirty jasmines. ( Literally dirty: it smells somewhat like flowers on warm, wet earth ).
Neil Morris is popping up on my radar quite often recently, should take a sniff of some of his perfumes sooner or later…
Kudos to you for taking on a note you don’t like for the sake of completeness! I usually do the same- when I find a new fascination, I explore every facet. Beauiful review, Birgit!
I won’t rest before I know every perfume of a line (well, if it is reasonable, I won’t be able to systematically take on L’Artisan for example in its entirety, there are just too many) sometimes this keeps me from tackling a perfume at all, because I think “But how will I get to try the other 35 in the line?” 😉
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“grounds for dismissal” — love it! 🙂
🙂
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… I need to try this, too!
OMG, all by Kilians seem to be gorgeous!!! Which one do you think could be my Lover? I’m in a river of tears… not handy brand, either… 😦
I will wait for them 😀
Best jasmine! 🙂
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