First Cut

An afternoon break, laying on a freshly cut hay bale. Around you, the meadow is dotted with weeds and prickly wildflowers, crushed from the thrasher, and still oozing sap. It's summer, and the grass holds warmth from the sun. You close your eyes, lean back and take pleasure in the sweet smells of nature. First Cut takes you there in a beautiful recreation of this experience. Diane St. Clair, founder, knows all about this. Her home is a farm in Vermont. And the hay harvest of grasses to provide winter food for the cows is an annual event. She has a passion for fragrance that runs deep, with her mentor being a Grasse trained perfumer. This combination of knowledge and love of scent is expressed in perfumes that reflect her life. First Cut is amazingly multi-faceted. You not only enjoy fresh hay, but the plants, flowers and warmth of the setting. Lite sillage, a facet of most naturals, is offset by an array of nuances make up for it. It opens with a camphorous blast from the pasturage, and softens during the drydown to let countless other details shine thru. I kept sniffing to capture new subtleties. I visited my grandparents farm as a child, and this brought back vivid memories of the rich smells in the county.

I am disappointed. Not by the smell, to be sure. This is beautiful. Unique, honeyed. It does indeed smell like a meadow full of wildflowers and hay in the sunshine. But the ONLY way to smell it is by planting my nose directly against my arm. : Zero scent radiation at all. It wears like an oil based perfume (which don't work on me, at ALL.) If I dose myself in multiple (MANY) sprays from the sample vial I get a very light scent perceptible without smashing my nose to wherever I sprayed. But given how costly these perfumes are I expect better. (At $125 for 30ml these are some of the most expensive cost per ML of anything I own (much more than say the Chanel Exclusif line).) At that cost I expect one or two sprays to last me all day, and to give me a really nice cloud of scent. I'm on 4 sprays and it's barely detectable. I would love to own this, it is just what I'm looking for, but it doesn't have the performance to make it worth the cost, sadly.

First Cut touches me the most out of Diane St. Clair's works: it feels like Vermont to me, and brings to mind the many visits my partner and I have made there in summer and early autumn, windows rolled down, the smell of the air saturated with grass and hay. It recalls all the many great memories we've made over the years. It also recalls that melancholy that seems to surface from the pastiche of wildflowers, herbs, grasses, and hay and the waning warmth as we enter the colder days, the often more challenging times in life. I think of lavender fields in Magog, Quebec during July; drinking sweet woodruff lemonade in August; overflowing wildflower meadows in September; burning braided sweetgrass on chilly nights in October.

I love this scent. The first thing that hits me is yuzu, bright and tangy and bitter and not at all sweetened and soapy the way a lot of citruses go, which I really love. Then a whole herbal bouquet of fresh cut grass, sweet honeyed flowers, savory tomato leaf and green pepper tumbles out, all mixed with the dry, sunny immortelle. As it dries down, you get very light tobacco, and any bitterness from the greens gets smoothed and sweetened by vanilla. This isn't a hugely powerful or long lasting scent, but it's so lovely that I don't really care. This scent captures the pastoral romance of haying season, minus the itchiness and diesel fumes and broken tractor parts. Rural idyll in a bottle.

This scent is gorgeous. I especially loved the juicy, aromatic, citrus opening, the particular cocktail of which reminds me of old school "petrol-like" full powered, skin-sensitizing bergamot with its fruity, tea, and herbal facets. This segues into a beautiful hay note that feels representative of true hay absolute with its facets of raisin, tobacco, and damp wood. The florals exist to color and shape the scent, though no one floral note stands out. The herbal-citrus-cacaphony of an opening meeting sweet, coumarinic hay brings to mind these clashing accords in Jicky, though this is a different beast than that. Unique, elegant, and yet infinitely wearable!

WOW! First Cut is high octane and very modern. It smells like lemon and very BRIGHT green grass upon first spritz. "Verve" is the word that springs to mind. I get a sunny hay on the dry down, and can definitely pick up on the geranium. Compared to its cousin Gardener's Glove, which feels appropriate for spring mornings spent transplanting seedlings, First Cut is best suited for admiring your crops on a golden autumnal evening. Lasted quite a few hours after application. Can easily see it becoming my daily driver as I am a country girl at heart.

This is a wonderful scent, truly reminiscent of summer meadows, hay and wildflowers. It has a bright, sharp start that quickly mellows down to a softer, sweeter scent. The blend is lovely with hints of lavender, herbs and hay. I spend a lot of time around hayfields and meadows and have been looking for a long time to find a wearable version of them. It is more of a skin scent so requires a strong finger on the spray bottle for lasting effect. But it's worth it!

Usually when I read the description of what a fragrance is meant to "evoke," I get all hyped for a mental trip to that sandy beach or damp coniferous forest or whatever the perfumer is trying to sell me on, and I'm almost always disappointed. Of course I can smell the coconut/cypress/etc. but I'm not transported. Smelling First Cut is the first time that I actually smell what is being described: "meadows, herbaceous and green, with wild flowers strewn throughout and splashed with radiant sunshine." There's definitely freshly cut hay and maybe honey, but there's so much more that I can't quite put my finger on because it's all blended so well and it all culminates in a beautiful image of a sunny pasture of freshly mown hay. This is one of the most "nature-y" (naturalistic?) fragrances that I've smelled and I suspect it may appeal most (or possibly only) to country people or those who are country at heart, who wish they could spend their days outside. First Cut really doesn't smell like any other fragrance I've tried, including the several hay-forward scents I've checked out. It's totally unique, totally beautiful, and definitely one that I will be purchasing again when my bottle runs out.

A beautiful and naturalistic honeyed image of a meadow in autumn. All the olfactory culprits are there to support this image, the other reviewers here have done fantastic breakdowns so I won't offer up my version, which will be quite similar. Very natural smelling but also performs like a all-natural in terms of performance. A bit close to the skin but I can smell wafts of it up to two hours. Usable longevity is short but I still love it for the image it evokes. Review done from my purchased bottle.

The top opens green and herbal with a burst of tomato leaf, basil, and citrus that feels honest and rough around the edges. But the alcohol hits hard upfront, and the drydown shifts fast... lavender, tobacco, and vanilla settle in like heavy boots on fresh grass. I understand the story—"three days of sunshine and many hours of hard work"—but it smells more like someone watching that work from a porch in silk. It's well composed and tells a clear story, just not one I want to wear. Definitely feminine, not outdoorsy in a literal sense. Less hayfield, more hayfield-themed bath product. MOVIE MATCH: Atonement — beautifully crafted, pastoral on the surface, but heavier and more dramatic than expected.

The website says this: Top Notes: Bergamot, Yuzu, Rosemary, Basil, Tomato Leaf Absolute Middle Notes: Lavender Absolute, Rose De Mai, Rose Geranium, Immortelle Absolute Base Notes: Hay Absolute, Tobacco Absolute, Oakmoss, Vanilla Absolute It is quite wonderful. There is an underlying slight sweetness to it, probably from the immortelle. I love it. So original and pleasant.