Any lily of the valley perfumes you do suggest today? I tried Cavatina from Dusita recently and thought it was pretty. Wonderful article! Love your work.
Honestly? You're hitting the central problem. Modern muguets barely exist anymore, and what does exist is mostly mediocre — exactly because of the regulatory squeeze the essay describes. Hydroxycitronellal is now capped at 1% (it used to be unlimited), and Lilial — the other workhorse muguet aldehyde — was banned outright in the EU in 2022 as a reprotoxin. That's two of the three pillars of the lily-of-the-valley accord gone in twenty years. Perfumers are mostly working with weaker substitutes now (Mayol, Florol, Lyral derivatives), and the result is what I'd call muguet-shaped compositions rather than actual muguets.
My honest recommendation (it's controversial, I know): En Passant by Frédéric Malle — technically a lilac, but it sits in the same emotional register: wet leaves, white flowers, rain on stone. If what you love about muguet is the atmosphere rather than the specific flower, this one is extraordinary.
Really wonderful essay! But I have to say, I’m not one of those who mourns the loss of Diorissimo. I grew up loving the smell of real lily of the valley flowers but never cared for the perfume version of them. Instead the vintage perfume I’m collecting and hoarding is Bellodgia because I want to smell like a spicy carnation not like a sweet little white flower. I have some other discontinued carnation perfumes in my collection as well. Now they are talking about banning eugenol!
Oh, you're the inverse of the whole essay. The hyperreal only traps you if you fell for it in the first place — you sniffed Diorissimo as a child, did the comparison, and walked away. The rest of us spent decades being gaslit by an aldehyde :)
And carnation is the better hiding spot anyway. Real Dianthus barely smells of anything — Bellodgia and the rest never pretended otherwise. They invented a spicy, slightly disreputable parallel object and called it carnation, and nobody complained. No lost original to mourn.
The eugenol news is awful but I refuse to grieve in advance. We'll cross that bridge when half my collection becomes contraband 🌹
Any lily of the valley perfumes you do suggest today? I tried Cavatina from Dusita recently and thought it was pretty. Wonderful article! Love your work.
Honestly? You're hitting the central problem. Modern muguets barely exist anymore, and what does exist is mostly mediocre — exactly because of the regulatory squeeze the essay describes. Hydroxycitronellal is now capped at 1% (it used to be unlimited), and Lilial — the other workhorse muguet aldehyde — was banned outright in the EU in 2022 as a reprotoxin. That's two of the three pillars of the lily-of-the-valley accord gone in twenty years. Perfumers are mostly working with weaker substitutes now (Mayol, Florol, Lyral derivatives), and the result is what I'd call muguet-shaped compositions rather than actual muguets.
My honest recommendation (it's controversial, I know): En Passant by Frédéric Malle — technically a lilac, but it sits in the same emotional register: wet leaves, white flowers, rain on stone. If what you love about muguet is the atmosphere rather than the specific flower, this one is extraordinary.
I love En Passant and hadn’t thought of it quite that way. Thank you!
Love learning more about the chemistry of all this in your reply. Fascinating!
Really wonderful essay! But I have to say, I’m not one of those who mourns the loss of Diorissimo. I grew up loving the smell of real lily of the valley flowers but never cared for the perfume version of them. Instead the vintage perfume I’m collecting and hoarding is Bellodgia because I want to smell like a spicy carnation not like a sweet little white flower. I have some other discontinued carnation perfumes in my collection as well. Now they are talking about banning eugenol!
Oh, you're the inverse of the whole essay. The hyperreal only traps you if you fell for it in the first place — you sniffed Diorissimo as a child, did the comparison, and walked away. The rest of us spent decades being gaslit by an aldehyde :)
And carnation is the better hiding spot anyway. Real Dianthus barely smells of anything — Bellodgia and the rest never pretended otherwise. They invented a spicy, slightly disreputable parallel object and called it carnation, and nobody complained. No lost original to mourn.
The eugenol news is awful but I refuse to grieve in advance. We'll cross that bridge when half my collection becomes contraband 🌹