Olfactoria's Travels

I promised to review this a long time ago, but somehow this little gem was overtaken left and right by flashier contenders, so it always got the “I´ll do that next week!” treatment. No more. It is high time to give Un Matin d’Orage the place it deserves.

Un Matin d’Orage, the stormy morning, is a perfume that I have learned to love like many other Goutals. Most perfumes of the line have made the journey from initial doubt to highly praised and most used in my collection. I have learned to appreciate each and every Goutal perfume I own, as very reliable, always appropriate, everyday fragrances. That sounds awful and does not capture at all what I mean.

They are not the workhorse perfumes I made them out to be in that previous sentence, but on the contrary, they are very special and unique. Each carrying something I have come to think of as a signature smokiness, that belie their seemingly simple and straightforward easiness.

I came to that conclusion with Vanille Exquise and I come to this conclusion here. But there is nothing to conclude yet, I should get on with the review first, shouldn’t  I?

Facts First:

Un Matin d’Orage was composed by Isabelle Doyen for Goutal in 2009. Notes include lemon, perilla leaves, ginger, jasmine sambac, gardenia, magnolia champaca and sandalwood.

It starts out like it says on the bottle – you smell exactly what a stormy morning smells like: freshly washed air, ozonic, aquatic and green . Then the wet vegetation comes through more clearly as time passes, like the sun peeking through the clouds. White flowers, namely Gardenia and Magnolia, make themselves noticable, but in a very transparent and subtle way, no cloying or heady floralcy, no heat or humidity either, like Goutal states on the website. For me it stays light, airy and gauzy throughout. This take on Gardenia is the most wearable I found to date.

The distinctive smokiness creeps in and stays through the drydown, which lasts for an impressively long time, despite the lightness and sheerness of the perfume.

I love that I can smell it on me throughout the day without it being too much for my environment, which makes Un Matin d’Orage a perfectly office appropriate scent that is still capable to keep a picky perfumista happy.

For the longest time I was not able to grasp and appreciate the subtle greatness of Annick Goutal creations. I thought them thin, watery, nice at best. How wrong! How beside the point! I am very glad I did not write them off to soon. Given the chance Un Matin d’Orage grew on me, insiduously creeped into my heart and secured a place in the first row there. My fondness is for this perfume is great and so is my respect for the perfumer Isabelle Doyen.

Un Matin d’Orage has that certain something that is so hard to capture, be it in words or in perfume. Enough with the insufficient words, let’s start smelling.

Picture source: laijamay.com, “stormy sky” and “three rain drops” courtesy of photo8.com, thank you!