White Satin

This is a wonderful trip down memory lane. It doesn't seem too dated or old to me. Feminine, elegant, perfumey, floral would be the words I use for White Satin. I find I enjoy it to calm down after a hectic day or if I feel like a break from heavy perfume. It is more a scent that I wear at home than going out, sort of a relaxing "time off". I have recently started experimenting with layering perfumes as I have a number that I enjoy but which do become overbearing after a while. One of these is Taylor Swift's Incredible Things. I love it for introducing me to some notes I had never considered before (passion fruit and leather), however it just becomes too much for me and towards the end of a day of wearing it I can start to feel sick, it is also not a perfume I would consider wearing to work or other more formal functions as I think it may affect people around me. I recently layered it over White Satin and the result was delightful! It calmed down the overpowering sweetness and created such a delicious, warm, creamy, ambery smell with the vanilla, I honestly couldn't believe my luck. It then started moving to a creamy passion fruit and suede. Some other perfumes I have found to work well for layering are Adam Levine's For Women; Chopard's Cascade; Kenzo's Jeu d'Amour; Elie Saab's Le Parfum EDT and EDP. It all depends on the notes in the different perfumes. Sometimes a meek perfume is boosted and other times an overpowering one is tamed.

I love this scent. I first started wearing it in the mid 1980's when at college and then into my first job. I had always worn Yardley fragrances growing up, especially Yardley Violets. White Satin was (the new formulation only has a whiff of what made WS what it was - tuberose?) a big blousey white floral, unlike most of the 80's big perfumes. I still have a small bottle of WS from the 80's that I often get out to have a sniff. Its hard to seperate the individual notes, but I'd guess tuberose, magnolia, white lilies, white musk. All the notes hit at once but not in a suffocating or headache inducing way. It was smooth, very white musk but not the BS white musk that tends to smell "dry". It was a gorgeous fragrance. The re-released version does not do it justice - there is no depth or bloom to it. I wish Yardley would bring this one back as the original.

A clean pink floral, inoffensive, sweet, powdery. Useful for doctor's appointments when you want to convey a feeling of cleanliness. My mother wore this (she'd be 91 now if she was alive). Good for church, weddings, that kind of thing - surprisingly well blended and long-lasting, considering the price and far better than all the fruity floral rubbish on the market.

I prefer Lace to this one as I feel it has a more definate identity somehow - White Satin has a kind of generic 'perfumey soap' smell, but for £4 I do actually find it quite comforting in a nostalgic way. I DEFINATELY prefer it's brand of cleanliness to modern 'clean' scents which are pretty repellant in general as its more romantic and complex

I bought White Satin and Lace on Ebay; this is a blend lily of the valley and peach, powdery, clean. Its also typical of Yardleys surprisingly high quality for the price tag. Biggest surprise was that it layers well with Suddenly Woman 1. I'm also going to try it with FCUK Connect Her which is woody.