Sel A Vie

I loooove this one! Fresh, clean citrus and salt with a soft woody base. The florals are lovely, not too indolic, but they give a nice lift and sunny quality to the fragrance. I can maybe see the comparison to Libre, but I hate Libre, and love this. This is much lighter and more airy. And no lavender, obviously.

I was sceptical from the notes because marine fragrances and I are usually not on speaking terms. But, I'd heard good things about this scent, hence hoping a sniff wouldn't hurt. Annoyingly enough, even from the cap the rumours proved true: this was lovely. Lovely enough I gave my wrist a spray. On skin it opens up somewhat like an elegant, floral beach-y candle with a creamy, mild beeswax base. This is in a chic, luxury resort sort of way rather than fake coconut, cheap salt or turquoise wax, thankfully. Fresh citrus, silky white petals, a lick of sea-breeze, and a soft laundry-clean base that gives this starched feel. The jasmine, or gardenia to my nose, is especially smooth, sunlit, and well-behaved, neither gritty nor doused in sea-spray. Even better: with none of that overripe indolic stuffiness jasmine can sometimes drag in. Here the jasmine lifts, warms and simply illuminates. There is also this faint vanillic softness underneath, enough to keep the salt and citrus from going austere. The result is clean but not sterile nor showy nor sunscreen-y, which I vastly appreciate. Sel A Vie, instead of linen, is more like a pale sundress drying in warm coastal air. It's intimate and pretty. A little conventional, perhaps, but attentively put together and would genuinely be a pleasant reach

Really pleasant salt and tropical floral scent. I find a lot of fragrances with similar scent profiles to be too loud and almost nauseating, but the way this sits close to the skin creates the impression of coming home from a day at the beach and still having a little bit of sunscreen and sand on your skin. Nothing groundbreaking and a little generic, but I appreciate it as a beachy skin scent.

the literal love child between YSL Libre and Mugler’s Alien Goddess; a tropical spin on fruity white florals and a juicy, salty vanilla that’s light, mature, and done well

Smells like the original Valentino born in Roma