Category Archives: Ozone

If you like your perfume to be subtle; preferably cold, and wistful – but not old-fashioned – then you might want to try L’Eau d’Hiver, a gentle and melancholy scent authored by that most minimalist of perfumers, Jean Claude Ellena.  A chill of winter:  bergamot, angelica, and a delicately ozonic note of ice-blanketed fields, as you gaze, incuriously, from the upstairs window, cradling tea.

The watery, woodish heart of the perfume – floral touches of iris, hawthorn, carnation and white heliotrope – lend touches of reassuringly honeyed reminiscence with their soothing notes of vanillic caramel.   They are notes, however, that are attenuated: sad, muted watercolours, as if seen from memory or frosted glass.

The delicate, soft transparency to L’Eau D’Hiver, this beautiful, wan smile of  pale, sugar-dusted almonds, is appealing initially as a comforting touchstone.   Eventually, all this fades, however, to nothing more than a sweet, featureless note of self-effacing colourlessness.

For the timid, and those who steadfastly plough their quiet and steely self assurance yet want a marker,  this scent has a place, though.  For the poetic. Shy, bookish girls in love with Sylvia Plath.