L'eau des Hesperides

UPDATE: Just noticed Colin Maillard's review. I have to say I disagree, that I don't get a prominent "artificial" impression. I wonder if it's due to a prior association he has. And the start isn't sharp for me. It's a little on the menthol-minty side when it starts, but I find it very pleasant. A "touch" bracing. ______________________________________________________ I wasn't going to buy this after reading a number of neutral and negative reviews on another site. People said it conjured up associations with toothpaste, mouthwash, and other pedestrian toiletries. But a few positive reviews pushed me to give it a shot. I bought a bottle without sampling first. I LOVE THIS! When you think of orange as a prominent note, you'd expect it to be "too predictable" for a fragrance. Not so with Hesperides. The blending of bitter orange, mint, lemon, grass, petit grain and rosemary results in a wonderfully soft and semi-sweet aroma. It's not your usual orange forward scent. The mint and lemon is almost as strong as the orange. A perfect spring time or summer fragrance, but even nice in the cooler months as a day fragrance when you just want to feel fresh. It's blended in such a way as to be smack dab in the middle of unisex, easily worn by either gender. Sillage and longevity seem to be pretty good. The bottle is very well crafted and the sprayer is smooth and precise. The cap is machined to fit perfectly to the top, so when pulled you get an air sucking "pop". In a niche Diptyque fragrance lineup of EdT and EdP bottles costing $150 and more, the "L'Eau" line comes in just under $100. And if you shop around, you can get it even cheaper on an occasional sale or partially used bottle (cheapest I've seen it was $49 shipped). Even at $98, it's a good buy. 9.2/10.

Falling in love with L'Eau des Hesperides has been like falling in love with a woman who lights up a room with the joy and depth radiating from her body, but is afraid of commitment, high maintenance, and will disappear with a smile, sooner than you wish her to. I'm going to have a really hard time not buying another bottle of this juice. If I do, I will think of it as an addiction, a co-dependent relationship with a graceful, elegant, distant sylph. She opens with a magnificent bitter orange and mandarin, the feeling on the skin a light minty coolness. She is immediately refreshing, calming, and clean--but without covering up or disguising the body. She melts into the skin--that will be the purported musk, I suppose--and lingers for an hour as rosemary, lemon, and mint for those who come close to you, and then fades to a green like crushed grass after two, only for you to enjoy. By the fourth hour, there is nothing left of her but the memory, the feeling of Her on your skin. Most appropriate for the hottest of days, it will be no surprise that this fragrance simply will not stick to the skin. It is far too expensive for a body spritzer, yet that is the end result. For me, the scent is moreish in the extreme--I could cover myself and my clothes in Hesperides, but it runs out faster than it should. If Diptyque could figure out a way to double the length of the experience, they would have a most dedicated customer--this could easily be my summer signature scent, if I didn't have to spend $100.00 a month on keeping myself supplied. L'Eau des Hesperides, you naiad, you zephyr, you're breaking my heart.

Diptyque has become one of those fragrance houses for me which is highly dangerous to the wallet. How unsurprised am I to find yet another gem from them. And this truly is a gem. L'eau de Hesperides opens with a delectable bitter orange note, like the smell of fresh orange rind clinging to the skin. This hooked me immediately. It holds its own for a while before the herbs start growing and a wonderful maple sweet immortelle - the component which encouraged me to try the scent - builds beautifully. The immortelle wears on me like a heart note, it's very dominant. But it's flushed with citruses and aromatic herbs, to me mostly rosemary and sage and even a bit of fresh mint - that however isn't a cooling note here - so that it has this great balance between sweet and herbal. L'eau de Hesperides I find plays with the luminous and sweet aspects of immortelle as a note, where L'Occitane's Immortelle de Corse to me highlights it's more resinous side. The result here is that I'm left with a fragrance that makes me think instantly of late summer: of sunshine burning down on bales of freshly cut hay; the wafting scent of herbs hung to dry; sweet lemon ice tea and fresh oranges. After a while the immortelle dies down, the sweetness receding so that my skin smells like I've rubbed the orange peel and herbs directly on it. It's just lovely. This also lasted a solid eight hours on my skin and was still there, though sillage fell after about five hours. A fantastic golden aromatic fragrance perfect for late summer and early autumn or for any time you want to remember the sunshine.

I'm really surprised Hesperides fell below the 4 star line (it was 4+ about 8 years ago). I bought my first bottle on a lark, a 100ml bottle for $50 (flash sale). It quickly became my "refresh" cologne for summer days. The vibe I get is very similar to the Acqua di Parma line of citrus forward scents. Where it really deviates nicely is that minty note behind the citrus. It makes this so refreshing. While longevity is only a little bit longer than AdP Blu Mediterranean fragrances on average, I actually rather like that. This isn't meant to be a heavy blanket of scent to stay with you across a full day. It's a "zesty" refresher with just a whisper of spice. It took me a few years to exhaust my supply, as I generally use Hesperides in the warmer months and I live in the Northeast. After I replenished it with a great buy on a partially used 200ml bottle, I began to get more liberal with it. A few short sprays after a nice soothing shower. Just wonderful. I really hope Diptyque makes a point of keeping Hesperides around (as these fragrance brands seem to just periodically decide to end a fragrance and move on, leaving adoring fans clamoring for dwindling stock!).

One of my warm weather go-to's. I suppose it could be called a "European Eau de Cologne" type, except that its aromatic component is HUGE, far too prominent to be compared to any traditional citrus Eau. Easily unisex. Wet, juicy, tart-sweet citrus is followed by an unexpected avalanche of chilling menthol, sage, rosemary, cedar and fir balsam. The mint component is not in any way "toothpaste", "chewing gum" or "Christmas peppermint"; no, it's just pure menthol of the kind that mentholated cigarettes or traditional men's shaving creams receive. That aromatic surge is positively ICY... FRIGID... SNOWY... GLACIAL. There is no fragrance out there even remotely similar to it, I don't think, so it stands as a real scent weirdo, almost in a league with ELD'O SM or SL MKK. The aromatic component subsides after about half-an-hour, as well it should: it's so cooling you'd freeze to death if it lasted longer. A whisper of transparent skin musk and pencil-ly cedar sweetened delicately with immortelle lingers in far drydown. I happen to find this scent something of a masterpiece, and I hope never to be without a flacon of it.