Essences Insensées 2015 (Jasmine) – lush and fruity and share-worthy

When I started this blog, I had very clear ideas about what I liked and what I didn’t like in fragrances. My relationship with some notes, like jasmine, was, well, complicated, but smelling it in fragrances where it played a minor role, I began to ‘know’ it, appreciate it understand it and love it. My relationship with jasmine now is straightforward: I find it irresistible. Really, really, irresistible. I mean, I’ve been bingeing on jasmine – sweet, floral, indolic, dirty, or not, depending on how it’s handled. And for the last while, I can’t seem to get enough of it.

So, in the spirit of exploring, growing and sharing, which is what I hope this website is all about, I want to tell you about Essences Insensées 2015 by Diptyque. Let’s start with the ‘2015’ bit of the name.

Each year since 2014, Diptyque has launched a limited-edition fragrance inspired by the quality of the harvest of a specific ingredient as part of its Essences Insensées collection. In 2015, it was jasmine, so the year in the fragrance's name indicates the featured note. However, I’m going to call it Essences Insensées 2015 (Jasmine) to differentiate it from the other scents in the collection.

The mimosa-based Essences Insensées 2014 (Mimosa) drew me to the collection in the first place and has become a favourite of mine, and right beside it is the jasmine-based Essences Insensées 2015.  (Jasmine).

Of Essences Insensées 2015 (Jasmine), the Diptyque website says: “After mimosa in 2014, jasmine provides the inspiration for this new opus. A very special kind of jasmine. Grown in Grasse, at the centre of the perfume industry, it isn’t picked until the autumn, at the very end of the season, when it has a fruity, almost candied quality. Essences Insensées 2015 is the result of the blooms picked by happenstance, and time itself. A fleeting fragrance whose origins lie on the hillsides of Grasse.” A. Very. Special. Kind. Of. Jasmine. SOLD!

It opens sweet and heady with aromatic, orange blossom, the warmth of my skin making it deeper and richer as it teases the indolic, opulent, lush jasmine up through it. As it blooms, a subtle soapiness appears just before it gets all fruity (I smell pear and banana and strawberry) and honey-sweet and jammy – it’s the candied fruit quality described on the website. As this ebbs, a note of basil shows up and adds an herbal, green dimension to the fragrance.  It all quiets down to a sensual skin scent that reflects the fleeting fragrance of jasmine in the fields of Grasse in the autumn.

Essences Insensées (Jasmine) 2015 is a soliflore – a beautiful jasmine fragrance with supporting notes that let the light, wafting scent of true jasmine shine.

Check out Essences Insensées 2015 (Jasmine) in our Shop.