A Gardener, two flowers

 When something is good, it's good without any justifications, without additives. Medusa and Iris Doux are that good. And what is strange is that both come from a man whom is still experimenting with materials and compositions. He's on the right path. I like the way Eliam plays with the flowers' radiance, with their defying character, and animalic materials, using the latter as a complement rather than a contrast.

Enter Medusa. An assault of blooming jasmine. No traces of green or delicacy, it goes straight into not overly funky mothballs and powdery roots with a menthol breath after a ration of blue-cheese. The civet adds a marvelous radiance to florals spreading a musky warmth around them, despite its cheesiness. There's phenolic and spicy traces of eugenol that mingle with the honeyed-sweet and balsamic nuances the benzoin has. Once the jasmine's rush is slowed down and the indols get rid of the funkiness, the fragrance turns into a hay-mossy leafy-herbal-old wood and dried fruits concoction with echoes of jasmine.

Medusa isn't abandon, it's sensuousness with a threat of intellectualism. Neither is the overwhelming, intoxicating floral scent that commands attention, it's well defined and nothing short of captivating, yet easily recognizable. 

I've smelled many iris interpretations so far, from cold iron to fleshy, carroty, dusty, nutty, rooty, makeup-like. Iris Doux is an iris disguised as a mimosa cheerleading its pom-poms in the air with forged overjoy. The iris sits in yellow shadows, with its chalky big white smile and its ghostly traces outlined in the smooth green, greasy, waxy and floral effect that mimosa produces in fragrances. It's a "sad" flower when in the wrong company, creating a melancholic atmosphere. In the best alignment, it gives a luminous touch to the composition, especially when, like here, is matched with heliotropin's radiance. Threads of rubber and chestnuts cooked on charcoal emerge from earth and knit into the orris-mimosa duo, while grounded by the rooty vetiver. Darkness and light collide and smash into each other. 

There is something endlessly romantic in Iris Doux that takes me to Percy Bysshe Shelly' Alastor; or, The Spirit of Solitude verses: 

"When night makes a weird sound of its own stillness,

Like an inspired and desperate alchemist

Staking his very life on some dark hope,

Have I mixed awful talk and asking looks

With my most innocent love, until strange tears,

Uniting with those breathless kisses, made

Such magic as compels the charmed night

To render up thy charge;..."

Crossed by a silent nostalgia, Iris Doux is one of those perfumes worth hanging on to, its iris battles between abstract and verging to perfection, with enough room to allow its fragrant harmony to expand.

It simply clicked with my soul.