white flowers

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ZigZag

Cut cube bottle with black tall top, on photo of Zsa Zsa in diamonds. The eau was originally chartreuse, mine has turned amber.

I was feeling kind of nostalgic and reached for this one this morning–originally out in the late 1940’s, had a heyday in the late ’60s when Zsa Zsa Gabor became the face, and then relaunched by Dana in the late ’90s.

ZigZag is a bit of a shapeshifter, opening with fascinating sniffy green tarragon amid some orangeade, then sliding into blowsy jasmine for an hour before lying on the skin with a dust of indulgent powder that has nothing of the top notes at all.
There’s a timeless cheeky pretension to it that I love–ultra feminine but cheap in the best way, like false eyelashes from the dollar store–and I bet it will have another resurgence, maybe late in this decade.

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More nostalgia, with no pretense whatsoever–from Joni’s first album, 1968.

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Casablanca

St. Clair bottle with dark amber eau, and hosta flowers because my tuberoses haven’t put out.

White flowers hit with a bang, loads of orange blossom, jasmine and tuberose too, but they’re wild and searching rather than lusty–almost as if escaping their space instead of beckoning one toward it–then they ease back to reveal some fruity citrus for a few hours. There’s nice benzoin on the bottom with some shadowy musk, like watchful guardian cats.

One to immerse in for a day, scent a bath, fill a room–
I’m curious what it does on warm days.

Edit – 6/28/23

In summer weather this has an indolent vibe–the florals less wistful, the animalics more prowling, the labdanum a little more smoky–definitely one for nights, still hovering a soft handspan off the skin at dawn.

I might like it even more than Gardener’s Glove.

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Malika Zarra is a jazz artist from Morocco. This song is my mood today, but check out her album Berber Taxi, too.

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At Last

Mini bottle with white lacy floral motif, and metal tube of lotion with the same design on yellow.

Overly friendly envelope glue and laundry starch.

And the “handcreme”, though nice and rich, smells even more deliberately boring.
I’m not one for lotions, but I’ve been gardening today–my neighbor (who probably wore some slinky Chanel back in the day, but doesn’t bother with all that silliness now) gave me a Dior sized heap of lily-of-the-valley bulbs–so my knuckles are thirstier than a pumice stone.

I have no idea why Margot Elena thought anyone would want to smell like this.
Lollia This Moment is a much better choice–not weird or fusty at all–and the bottle is cuter.

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Also not frumpy:

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Pure Poison

Mini bottle with white fade up to the black collar and purple lettering, casting iridescent shadows.

A jasmine bomb with a 2 mile blast radius.
Pull the candy orange peel pin and white flowers go nuclear, a dense gardenia fog with ambery woods fallout underneath, that flattens every other scent in the vicinity.

Brilliant and a little frightening.
Wear in winter with an open carry permit.

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