I still hear your sea winds blowin' / I still see her dark eyes glowin'

Annick Goutal Songes

For me, my grandparents’ house was more of a home than anywhere I lived growing up. I loved their house and I lived there for years and years. Some part of me lives there still, in the version I knew as a very little girl, when everyone was healthy and it was my escape from my parents and their pain, when the house was full of music and dancing and light. Out back there was a beautiful tree. Specifically, a magnolia tree. It was a large tree, about seven feet tall by the time I left home. During the spring and summer the smell of magnolias would hit you as soon as you walked out the back door onto the porch. In fact, fif the inside door was open, the scent would waft in through the screen door. That beautiful smell was a constant in my childhood.

Another smell one becomes accustomed to at a cellular level growing up along the Coast is the earthy, oily, salty smell of the Gulf Stream. It’s so pungent that on my first cross country road trip, I smelled home the second we crossed the border from Oklahoma into Texas. As soon we got past the Red River, I turned to my uncle and said, “I think I smell the ocean.” He turned to me with a smile and said, “That’s the Gulf. In about half an hour we will even start hearing gulls.” And we did. That pungent smell is always there when I dream of home, so full of dirt and life and the sea.

For me, Annick Goutal's Songes represents both. Songes was the first quality perfume I purchased in large part because it was the first scent I was ever given that spoke to me at a deeply personal level. I inquired of another perfumista recommendations for a scent I might buy myself as a thirtieth birthday present. She brought me four samples: S-perfume 100% Love, L’Artisan Dzing!, Lorenzo Villoresi Alamut, and Songes. They are all lovely and unique, and at this point I own them all. But the first, the one that spoke to me personally, was Songes. I didn’t realize until today that I had overlooked reviewing this beautiful fragrance. So pretty, so perfect for me, in fact, that I bought two bottles within a week. The first was a 50ml, and then I saw a great deal on a 100ml bottle that I decided was more than worth it.

Goutal describes Songes as follows:

Songes—French for 'dreams'—comes alive in a romantic, sensual fragrance from Annick Goutal. A bouquet bursting with both primitive and delicate notes, surrounded by exotic white florals. Notes of frangipani, absolute of ylang-ylang, absolute of jasmine and absolute of vanilla. Created from the most noble and natural ingredients.

As the story goes, Songes came about after Camille Goutal was inspired by a garden near the sea.

During a romantic trip, as she was walking in an exotic garden on the island of Mauritius at night fall, Camille Goutal was taken by surprise by the scent of all the exotic and secret white flowers, at dusk when the very spur of nature intoxicates the night. She didn't resist the desire to create a perfume to immortalise this very unique moment. Together, with Isabelle Doyen they recall the image of a sensual and extremely romantic and voluptuous night.

On me, Songes is a combination of big beautiful flowers and salty ocean air. The initial application has that sting of salt that gets in your eyes as the wind suddenly delivers the scent of flowers to you. Like the smell that hits you during a warm summer night walk on the beach. It combines with the smell I get from spending the day at the beach, strong and salty, with an undertone of sweet skin sweat and Coppertone suntan lotion. On the dry down the sweat and suntan lotion wears away, with the flowers and sea salt hanging around you in a cloud. It lasts for hours and hours on me. A generous spritz this morning and twelve hours later it is still going strong, gathering compiments. The strongest notes on me are the jasmine and the frangipani, which reads as very magnolia. The one note that I really don’t get much of at all is vanilla, and I really like vanilla, so I think I’d notice.

If olfactory memory is the strongest memory, then those scents that remind us of memories we cherish will probably be scents we love even if no one else does. For me these memories are even more poignant in the wake of Hurricane Ike, which destroyed Crystal Beach, Texas, the Gulf Coast community I spent my childhood and teenage summers in.

With some scents, the love of the perfume and our habit of wearing it will create special memories; with other perfumes, we will love the scent because the memory is already there inside us and the perfume brings it out. Songes is big and beautiful and refuses to be ignored, so it isn’t going to be for everyone. But if you love it, you will love it deeply, and the fact that it is strong and assertive in its sensuousness won’t scare you away. 
Galveston, oh Galveston!
I still hear your sea waves crashing.
While I watch the cannons flashing,
I clean my gun and dream of Galveston.
Songes is available at Nordstrom, Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue, though I got it decently discounted thorough Fragrance.net.
Want more reviews? Check out these:
* Robin of Now Smell This! has a review here.
* For the Love of Perfume’s review.
* For Bois de Jasmin’s review, go here.

Listening to: Galveston by Evan Dando.