Symbiose

I recently learned that there seems this trend among the younger cohort of perfumistas and -istos that florals are "boring" and "predictable." I could cry. Have we reached this level among the rigorously astute cognoscenti that we know suggest that the very spirit, the very poetic nucleus of perfume, is now deemed overrated? I think part of our brains being fried is this perpetual onslaught of uninformed and critically bankrupt opinions plus the addictive formula of social media engineering. We are trying to make sense of being pushed into milieux that we wouldn't be part of pre-internet (sorry, digital natives, I will weep for you). They wouldn't be the people we met at parties or hung out with at bars and clubs. The ones who we would make life-long or even intermittent connections. They'd be the ones we'd only tolerate in passing as co-workers who usually kept their opinions private if we were lucky, or neighbors, annoying people on television we could shut off if we had enough, and so forth. Now, with social media convincing so many of us that we need to hear all these bozos and their opinions and lack of intellectual power, their willful ignorance and limited emotional regulation skills, it feels like the worst overkill. Social media is engineered to get us hooked, so we are addicted with dealing with the stupidity, insanity, and ignorance of so many, not to mention the unyielding torrent of mind-melting information and the resultant nervous system torment. What does this have to do with Symbiose? It's a shimmering-gold and radiant-green, larger-than-life-itself, spicy and sensual FLORAL. And I could cry as it sings its plangent melody on my skin. Because perfume, save for the devoted few who revere and preserve perfume as it once was in their own work, will never quite be like this again. Life will never quite be like it once was. The way we used to bond, flirt, court, challenge each other, move in our spaces, be something other than mere extension of our online avatars, always looking for the next dopamine hit. As the world, as it truly is, without our black magic we call "technology," seeming to lead us to cultural erasure, with an amnesia for how we used to be; since most of us no longer even read so as to retain our past selves our heritage, our ancestry, our wrongs and rights, ever present, ever waiting impatiently behind the next big thing until we cease to exist. Yes, Symbiose is one of those perfumes. Vivacious and fleshy, it holds the flowers that are blinding white or burning pink or sunbeam yellow, a chorus of heavenly smells, all making it clear that they will never be irrelevant, no matter what wind foolish humans follow. They will outlive perfume. They will outlive us.

Firstly, Stendhal made far more than the recent , Millennial handful of Elixirs ( the house blurb doesn't even mention this from 1979 so I'm guessing it was added as an afterthought ). Secondly, it clearly can't smell like Madame Carven and Audace ( even though I've never got the amount of coconut others seem to get in Mme Carven ). It's closer to Audace but no violet. It's a very much a chypre and not really spicy at all. It's a GREEN Floral Chypre with a capital G, Galbanum and Oakmoss reign. You can tell this came out in the late 70's. It in good company with JLS, Silences, Partage and a Yves Rocher one called Gaelle. Yes, and Audace. If this is your era and you can find it for a few quid, as I did, buy it !!