Flora Bella – floral and warm and elegantly tropical

 Lalique Window, Henri Bendel, NYC, Photo: perfumeniche

Lately I’ve had a real hankering for floral fragrances. Could be the weather, could be the angle of Mars to Saturn, could be a phase, a stage or a permanent thing, I don’t know. All I know is that I want to smell the fragrance of flowers rising from my skin – rose, violet, freesia, mimosa, tuberose, carnation orchid, tiare – all of them filling my lungs, swimming around in my brain, making my aura glow. It’s Flora Bella from Lalique that I am craving.

Lalique is the French glassware design company founded by famed Art Deco jeweler and glass designer René Lalique.  M. Lalique is also known for the contribution he made to perfumery.

In 1907, French perfumer François Coty hired Lalique to create bottles for his perfume. It was a pretty exciting idea because at the time perfume was sold in plain glass vials and women who wanted to store and showcase their perfumes  had to buy and decant their fragrances at home. Together Coty and Lalique revolutionised the perfume industry by selling fine perfumes in attractive glass flacons at affordable prices.

History sure is fascinating, but it’s not history that has my interest now, it’s Flora Bella.

It opens with bitter bergamot, slightly sweetened with mandarin, and then it wastes no time getting to the flowers – lush rose, its fresh greenness enhanced by geraniol, and velvety violet. As it blooms, mimosa, smelling clean, and fresh is the first to show up joined by freesia and frangipani but I smell carnation here too, its soft spicy/peppery warmth giving the flowers depth and complexity. A subdued note of pink pepper along with cassia flower, extend the gentle warmth and spiciness of the carnation. Tuberose and Tiare flower come next, lush, tropical and enticing. Somewhere out of the mix comes a metallic tang that really…belongs. It’s what makes Flora Bella unique and a standout in the crowded ‘floral’ category. At the base, vanilla, spices and amber combine to give it a creamy, milky, sweetness while white musk gives it a clean, skin note.

Flora Bella is the fragrance of a sunny, tropical, floral bouquet, with a whiff of salty skin, deftly subdued and balanced so that the drydown is sophisticated rather than casual, urban rather than ‘beachy’. It’s not the smell of topless sunbathing on the beaches of St. Tropez, rather, it’s the elegant floral scent of a sunny tropical day on your skin. Bliss!

Check our Flora Bella in our Shop.