Lys Mediteranee – floral and aquatic and so very evocative

^{Menton, C}ôte d'Azur, France - Wikipedia - Gerard Cohen, 2003

I am a memory hoarder. I like remembering people, places and events in my life that are meaningful to me. I journal often and like to place small mementos near an entry to spark a deeper memory. There’s a sprig of spruce from a canoe trip in Northern Ontario, the invitation to my niece’s wedding, a wrapper from a pastry shop in Saint-Juan de Luz where I had my first mouchou. In one journal, there’s a dried lily placed beside an entry about a romantic dinner we had years ago on the terrace of a restaurant on the promenade in Menton. There’s a stain on the page with an arrow pointing to the lily and the words: “Lys Mediteranee – Malle – buy it” beside it.

I must have come across the fragrance and been impressed enough that I made a note to myself to buy it. Clever. Very clever. Except I didn’t buy it. I got busy; I got distracted, I moved on to the next thing. Besides, just because I write in my journal often doesn’t mean I go back and read it often. Duh.

A couple of years later, I rediscovered Lys Mediteranee. Smelling it on my skin again, I remembered its serene beauty and how the fragrance of a spiced lily, gently kissed by a salty sea breeze, made me feel. I remembered the notation in my journal to buy it, and this time, I did.  

Lys Mediteranee opens with a note of sweet, fresh-smelling orange blossom. Bergamot adds a nose-tingling tartness that corrals the sweetness and gives the fragrance a green backbone. Quietly, the flowers start to bloom. I smell the heady, rich scent of lilies, waxy and green, their spicy aspect heightened with a clove note. Jasmine and tuberose are here, too, deepening lushness. Add to this the smell of a salty sea breeze - not the smell of the beach so much as the clean, fresh, aquatic smell of the sea, and I am back on that restaurant terrace in Menton.

Lys Mediteranee dries down to a soft, airy skin scent that’s heady, floral, and fresh. It’s just a gorgeous fragrance to wear in summer.

With Lys Mediteranee perfumer Edouard Fléchier has created a fragrance with an elegant minimalism so haunting and evocative that it reawakens a time and place in me like no other fragrance ever has. I think this is what I’ve come to like most about it.

Keeping a journal is important to me, not just to record events, but to track emotional breakthroughs, lessons and insights that, I hope, make me a better person. For example, here’s a lesson I just learned: read your journals more often.

Check out Lys Mediteranee in our Shop.