Gold Leaves

I'd been curious but wary about Régime des Fleurs for a while; I couldn't tell if they were legit or just another overpriced bougie niche perfumer whose bottles were worth more than the juice inside them. Gold Leaves dispelled my suspicions. It's an ethereal fragrance, difficult to describe. My first impression is of pure, unadulterated springtime: green, growing things brought to bud and blossom by light, air, and water. Then: delicate, sparkling white-green florals, clean and fresh and zesty. The blend is truly outstanding; as soon as I try to isolate any of the listed notes, they slide—seamlessly and ineluctably—back into the overall bouquet. They float together, airy and frolicsome. Later, the amber and cardamom move a bit more to the front, but never really cede to the floral and green notes. This is how I imagine the secret garden would smell in the Francis Hodgson Burnett novel. There is a very beautiful and somewhat rare verb in French, "éclore", which to me captures the essence of springtime. It is related to the archaic verb "clore", which means "to close". The é- is a prefix that negates or indicates displaced motion. So, even though it is often translated as "to bloom" or "to hatch", it literally means "to unclose", which makes sense, for the things that it applies to—buds, eggs, ideas—always start closed until it's their time to shine. I think that an even better name for Gold Leaves may have been the noun form of this verb: "Éclosion"–Blossoming, Unfolding, Unclosing. A bit linear, yes. But it's such a pretty line. And it meanders on and on, keeping you company until the weary sun dies its daily death upon horizon's bower.

How beautiful from start to finish. I fell in love. Thank you Mr. Mathieu Nardin for this beautiful creation. I feel as if this was created specifically to fit my taste (at least for now). If you are, like me, a lover of white flowers, lilies in particular, resins, incense and green notes, most probably you will love golden leaves too. Wonderfully well balanced. Giving you what you might crave of calming cool breaths of green, narcotic headiness of white flowers, rootedness of earthy woods, entwined and in turns, all in balanced doses so that you are never bored or overblown. Balanced elements of Fire, air, and earth. Water is there in a very tiny dose, since the lilies are mature in full bloom, not dewy and young. This perfume evokes the image of a white wolf walking among a bush of white lilies on a night of full moon. The official description fits. It is narcotic and heady, without being loud. It is muted, not sparkly. However there is a transparency to it, I think thanks to the greenness from the woody notes. Not too dewy, not too dry. At first, the woods are dominant, then the lilies bloom. They keep blooming and become darker in character, as one reviewer stated, become more indole, as if they ferment, becoming a tad bit animalic, but the woods balance it and give it transparency. I would wear it everyday, in whichever occasion. It has strong character, but the sillage is moderate. Towards the end, it becomes woody-animalic. update: This has pretty strong lasting power, and smells sweaty towards the end.

This is absolutely gorgeous - I've been looking for a treatment of laurel leaves in a fragrance (because of my name; it seemed like it could be a "signature") and I had yet to find one that wasn't overly masculine, like spicy aftershave, which tends to happen with it. This treatment is verdant, alive with blooming trees. It has a similar effect for me as another favorite, California Reverie, although it's much less sweet or floral, in that it evokes a place at the borders of town, a wild field overtaken by spring verdure and blooming trees. I love the imagery in the choices of notes too: the "fleur de lys" is as much about the iconography as it is about the scent I would think. It's a play between the formal, classical symbolism of the gold laurel wreath or the fleur de lys image, on one side of the equation, and the wildness of notes like pittosporum and the other green woods and flowers, the wildness of nature that escapes human signification.

If you love lilies and iris, you should take a sniff of Gold Leaves. The citron, cedar, and spices seem to somewhat foil the dark edge I usually sense in lilies (both fresh and in fragrance accords-- perhaps these are indoles?), but there is something else in this slightly beyond recognition that has a very faint suggestion of something in the camphor neighborhood. Fortunately, that phase was fleeting. This dried down to one of the most gorgeous florals I have experienced. This is on my want list. Between this and the exquisite Falling Trees, I'll have difficulty choosing which to buy first, but I am very impressed with Regimes des Fleurs.

Reminds me of slightly sweeter orchid soleil minus the corn tortilla note. Orchid soleil is a guilty pleasure that I only wear around the house because the reactions from others range from “wtf” to “ew.” I find it addicting, personally. Anyway, Gold Leaves is a significantly more generally appealing version.