THE TROUBLE WITH LINDEN : TILIA by MARC ANTOINE BARROIS (2024)

Linden, or lime tree blossom, or tilleul– a very evocative French word that accurately captures this flower’s sighful nostalgia, is one of those natural floral experiences – as you pass by under a tree; as you catch it on the air – that is irrevocably mood- altering. For me, it is also a smell full of ambivalence. On the one hand, linden suddenly catches you off guard, dipping you into a dream ; pollened and drowsy, there is a plunging melancholia yet also a strongly euphoric aspect to its savoury perfume that makes it transcendental. Strolling down Unter Den Linden in Berlin, perhaps the world’s most famous avenue of linden blossoms, the soft wooze of the benignly pungent odour drifting off the trees immediately severs you from the every day.

On the other hand, there is something quite gaggy and overly fulsome about lime blossom that is slightly too fecund. Like chamomile, which can repulse me – especially as a herbal tea (tilleul tisanes have the same effect), I am not drawn to anything bilgey, grassy or barn-like :tatami mats can leave me queasy; I cannot tolerate immortelle. This is not an attraction/repulsion mechanism, as when you put your head into a full throng of jasmine or gardenias or wisteria or lilies and experience deep pleasure and a dirty problematic as holistically enjoyable: with certain other flowers it is more a lunging split-screen of like/dislike. I sometimes feel similarly about lilac; freesias; even osmanthus, which, though devastatingly attractive initially when it comes out at the beginning of October, can eventually make me feel a bit peachy around the gills.

Yesterday, on a whim but also because I wanted to a buy a particular solid rose perfume from the gift shop for my upcoming hospital stay next week, we spent a beautifully serene morning at the Ofuna Flower Center, staying far longer than we had anticipated. Ordinarily, the municipal banality of this place – it can be grim on a cold January day – can dull the inspirations, and I wondered how it might in fact be on a dried-out roasting August day when heat warnings were being given over the tannoys and a gardener told us to be careful in English as well for good measure; ‘stay in the shade: be careful of heatstroke!‘. So we headed straight for the outdoors cafe under the shade of a big tree and ended up sitting there for a very long time indeed, the shimmer of cicadas in the background a soothing orchestra.

There was almost no one there. A-sight impaired older woman in lace and straw hat straight out of a Monet painting with her guardian sat for an equally long time at another table, as we all stared out quietly at the vista of lotuses and wild flowers- a little straggly, but all the better for it- I am have never been a fan of botanical neatness – until we decided that we too should venture around the garden just a little seeing that we had paid the entrance fee. The sun was too unrelenting to stand under its gaze for too long, but it was fascinating to see the lotus flowers and how they were being treated with specific aqua-hydraulics and to smell them up close- ornate, aquatic, pristine, above everything — and then head into the hothouse.

It was so hot outside, like an African savannah – D said that yes, it did remind him a bit of when he lived in Tanzania- that the greenhouses’ windows were open, creating a slightly limp, dried out effect you would not usually associate with jungly botanica. None of the raw steamy verdancy and free facial hydration you get upon entering a climate-controlled tropical environment. A bit dessicated and wilting – there was not a soul in there – but therefore more intimate. The musa banana varietals looked alive but not quite thriving; the ylang ylang tree, which I was thrilled to come across (the garden even has a ‘ylang ylang illuminated at night’ feature on August 16th which I will be sadly missing as I will be on the ward then) and which had very extensive, raggled flowers – much bigger than the ones I have seen before (the only other time I have encountered ylang ylang trees on the stem, in the flesh, was when I naughtily picked some from a tree when in Malang, Java, in 2013, beside myself with glee to have finally encountered them just casually existing in the middle of an Indonesian city.)These impressively scaled flowers were a little flaccid and limp: up close, they had the fundamental ylang ylangness of ylang ylang – the more penetrating characteristics you find in lesser quality essential oils – but not quite the exhilarating living flower breath.

If not the ylang ylang, then what was the exquisite scent that met you upon entering that particular room of the greenhouse? My nose led me to the almost linden-like pom poms of a tree I didn’t recognize, but which turned out on closer inspection to be Royal Mahogany, or Everfresh – a light, soul-lifting floral scent from South America – gentle, sensual, a little like snowy azaleas, one of my favourite flower smells – and it filled the room gorgeously – gently, not overly narcotically – and which made me think about how heavy linden blossom is in comparison.

I have never really worn tilleul. There was an Occitane extrait back in the day which I semi-liked and would wear occasionally on summer mornings; I also had a ‘pillow spray’ from some Provencal outfit or other but it never really spoke to me. I guess I don’t really do full ‘blowsy’. Baruti’s Onder De Linde, which I am glad to own but which is alien to my sensibilities (pear, lilac, linden, honey over sandalwood musks) is of the Une Fleur Cassie family of perfumes that I can find alluring – but like linden itself, acacia, and mimosa sometimes too – somehow too invasive and troubling for some psychological reason I can’t entirely pin down. I like my flowers more overt, forthright; dazzlingly fleshy – tuberose for instance, white and ghostly and so dazzling to the senses – and which I could eat. Tilleul is of a more spring/autumnal bent, for those of a more sensible, sober nature- and I think spiritually I am more inherently created for the summer.

Having said that, another linden I do have in my collection and which I do wear on occasion is Schwarzlose’s IA-33, an enjoyably sunny portrait of Berlin that has an extremely appealing top accord of neroli, mandarin and linden blossom that can send you briefly ecstatic with its implacable positivity – until, a few hours later, it wimps out with a wan ending when the detested amberwood/’oud’ note appears making the perfume, if not unwearable, just no longer enjoyable (there is only a very small quantity). Even that, though, is enough to put me off, in the end, and the reason I no longer go near much modern perfumery : I truly wish that those aromachemicals had never been invented.

Which brings us to today’s perfume in question, Tilia by Marc-Antoine Barrois – a Parisian niche perfumery with a range of fragrances created by the ubiquitous Quentin Bisch. As it goes, I would say that this is definitely my favourite linden of all those I have smelled so far: spiky and uplifting, with a very legible immediacy – principally because the perfumer, rather than keeping the dried out husks of linden blossoms in their original beige and monocled hessian, decides, interestingly, to dye the flower a counterintuitive pinky coral red red. Deep red, staining them with vital jasmine sambac; from drab coloured wear to night gown — I find this a very inventive and exploratory opening accord for a linden perfume : my interest was duly piqued.

The blurb goes thus:

Simple. Solar. Smiling. It is the scent of everlasting summer. Of holidays that never end. Of long lazy lunches with friends, out in the countryside, around a big wooden table. Of flowers that just keep on blooming.

Tender verdancy, pollen, honey from the linden tree with its lovely heart-shaped leaves, an emblem of softness and flexibility for the Celts. The honeyed, apricot inflexions of broom. The tender powder of heliotrope. A bucolic bouquet made still richer with a sprig of velvety jasmine Sambac. Underlined, like a stroke of shade intensifying the radiance of an afternoon in the sun, by the smoky earthiness of vetiver…

It has to be said that the composition does work very well, which is why it has been such a rave review online hit. Tilia is both familiar and new. Modern; sharp, fruity, clean, with the grapey tones of the current Givenchy L’Interdit giving the perfume sauce, it speaks in a silky boutique hotel bath robe language I found instantly attractive.

But would I wear it?

I was wearing it. And was glad it had come my way. I will still reach for it every once in a while. There is a rather craveable facet to Tilia which essentially means that Monsieur Bisch has done a good job. When a perfume has an angle or a hook that you get caught on, it distinguishes itself from all the others you know from the past and the present — and becomes a need.

Sadly, all the enthusiasm I had at the beginning for this perfume was, I suppose inevitably, soddened by the slowly accruing realization that every time I put on Tilia, I kept being transported to a gaggle of British teenage girls in low cut grey cotton track suit trousers and thrust up boob tops laughing a little menacingly on the Chiltern Line from Solihull into the station at Birmingham Moor Street.. The requisite orange foundation. The clogged fake eyelashes. The ‘contouring’. The whole lo-cost Kim Kardashian look that has taken over the UK for the last few years and rendered otherwise pretty girls bargain basement drag queens ( I remember Helen telling about the time her son Beau went to Belgium, and in a beautiful medieval city, he had the startling realization that here were the unimaginable actual girls of his dreams; hair, faces, bodies, features — not clowns). The girlz can of course smell very sexy, with their nubile Juicy Coutures and Baccarat Rouge knock-offs, their Superdrug body sprays, bubble gums and the unerasable strength of their hyper-strength all day lasting fabric conditioners – the main fragrance they carry about them, and one that fill up the airwaves of the trains until you can no longer think straight. Unfortunately, this is where the base notes of Tilia end up on my skin though ; ambroxan, and ‘Georgywood’ – extrait de laundromat — and they stick to you like a tattoo.

I felt revved up by the new magenta in Tilia when I first wore it. And if I could keep the lower stages hidden in some way I would probably wear this regularly. My transformation into British teenage girl with a low cut velvety bottom is, however, just too alarming, ultimately, for my presently fragile and beleagured soul system. I become estranged from my own essence. And it is at this point, as the linden extract in the Barrois starts to fade, and the chemicals begin to take over. that I then, perversely, start to yearn for the real thing: real lime blossoms, the blowsy beauty of the tilleuls troublants, as they aerate the city and countryside, with all their perturbing, emotional spectrum: their greenery; their natural, spatial awareness.