From the irrepressibly cheerful fizz of Rhubarb My Love this morning to that old grey ghoul Iris Silver Mist this afternoon.

I’ve grown to love Maurice Roucel’s cold, rooty iris bomb from Serge Lutens despite, or perhaps because it feels like someone holding a wreath of irises above my head and whispering about mortality. I never could quite shake those teenage goth tendencies.

I’m not sure how much is reformulation, and how much is a development of my own taste, but it’s a long way from my first reaction, years back, when it felt like silvered icicles hammered into my sinuses.

It’s still as sinister as an unexplained noise in an empty house–and something in the opening is disconcertingly reminiscent of anaesthetics from childhood surgeries–but it’s also a beautiful, comfortable dust monster.

Is it wrong that this that makes me think of the Ancestor in Moominland Midwinter?

(Thank you @armadilloscookiequeen I’m awfully glad to have this.)

first posted 2 April 2019