FONTAINE ROYALE N°2

Eau de Parfum

This delicate adoration of creamy musks, baby powder and voluptuous floral notes and enticing balsams has the most delicious skin scent, not the immediacy of reality per se but the memory of skin, a reminder of rendezvous and complicit intimacy.

The name Fontaine Royale (Royal Fountain) conjures up images of huge elaborate baroque fountains in royal landscapes. Designed to dazzle and provide spectacle and sound, the cunningly engineered structures were often created as writhing, animalic forms, Tritons, shells, mermaids, Poseidon, horses, cupids, snakes and dragons. Once a necessary conduit to water land, technical advancements changed the way water was delivered and fountains became the ornamental preserve of a wealthy elite, as they set out to compete with one another to create increasingly dramatic displays.

There is sensual stagecraft in Fontaine Royale, the central triptych of jasmine, roses and orris is caressed by velveteen geranium, cedarwood and milky sandalwood. Ambergris in the base emphasises the warm saltiness of skin, the crook of an elbow, the curve and neck, a warm inner thigh. This is a dropped handkerchief of a perfume, a silken square dosed in scent, monogrammed and from a passing carriage or slipping from a daring hand as a lover passes by. The fabric will have an odour of promise, moreish traces to be pressed against the nose and inhaled. Perhaps it has mopped a brow or dabbed a face of dewy maquillage.

Quietude in perfume is an addictive state, the craving to inhale deeply from a wellspring of desire. Fontaine Royale is an intimate and beautifully appointed scent, a whisper of temptation embedded in lacteous skin musks.

Composition:

• Bergamot
• Jasmine, Rose, Orris, Geranium
• Sandalwood, Cedar, Musk, Ambrette, Styrax, Labdanum, Vanilla

Perfumer: Nathalie Feisthauer, 2016

inci list: Alcohol, Parfum (Fragrance), Benzyl Alcohol, Benzyl Benzoate, Benzyl Cinnamate, Cinnamal, Citral, Citronellol, Limonene, Linalool, Cinnamyl Alcohol, Isoeugenol, Alpha-isomethyl Ionone, Geraniol.