À la Reine

I'm very torn on this one. Because, wow, it smells exactly like what it says. Mad props to the perfumer's art here. But it also smells exactly like what it says. Nothing softened or made into pretty impressionist "the idealized idea of the smell more than the actual smell, warts and all." It smells like dirt. Good clean dirt, like a sack of potting soil, but the primary scent impression is earth. Fantastic petrichor note, most accurate I've ever smelled, but again, intensely earthy. And lots of strong vegetal notes, tomato leaf yes, cucumber yes, but not a cleaned and chopped salad smell, this is intensely green and growing and grounded in the earth. I don't know that I want to smell like this, it's kind of a lot, but it's really really cool and I'm glad to have experienced this piece of photorealistic art.