Lost In Flowers

If you’ve ever tried out a bunch of floral perfumes and said to yourself, nope, just not floral enough, then let us introduce you to Lost in Flowers. Remember the scene from American Beauty when the cheerleader lying in the bath was showered with rose petals? Well, replace the roses with champaca, muguet, and gardenia petals, and that’s what wearing Lost in Flowers feels like. Most aptly named, Lost in Flowers is a sublime experience akin to submerging oneself in a warm bath of heady, fragrant, life-giving flowers. Called joy oil in India, the rare red champaca otto used in Lost in Flowers casts a strange, unearthly glow over the composition. It at first smells innocent, like fruit dipped in cream and wrapped in a clean, juicy shampoo aura. But then it is also smells musky and honeyed, in a way that’s more suggestive of intimacy. What dominates, for us, however, is the exquisite gardenia enfleurage, a costly and rare extraction that yields the only true portrait of gardenia that exists in perfumery. Gardenia lovers take note – this is Holy Grail material: creamy, salty, and with a bodacious meatiness that’s soulful without ever tripping over into bleu cheese territory. The astringent pop of saffron adds an undertone of leather and iodine, the tagetes a pungent, hay-like facet – colorful touches of Indian attar perfumery in an otherwise tropical picture. Thanks to these spicy, woody touches, and to the salinity of the gardenia, Lost in Flowers never runs sweet or syrupy. It’s not even overtly feminine in the traditional sense. In other words, men – knock yourselves out with this one. It’s a stunner, no matter which way you slice it.