Let's talk about love for a moment.
My romantic attitude, from the moment I knew romance existed, has always been of the leap-then-look-go-big-or-go-home variety. Always the first to commit. Always the first to say "I love you." With the rare exception, always the last one to quit. Ever the dumpee, I don't think I ever knew the concept of "surrender" in love; after all, that would have required some sort of initial restraint.
So when I received a generous sample of By Kilian Love and Tears (Surrender) conceptually the scent was lost on me. Jasmine, on the other hand, is not. Love and Tears recently won the 6th Annual Canadian Fragrance Award for Niche Launch Men's or Women's Fragrance. By Kilian describes it thusly:
I think it can be hard to make a good jasmine, since so often jasmine gets used in soaps and cleansers. I quite enjoy a few scents with strong jasmine notes. I love Annick Goutal Songes, which is a wonderful beachy scent. I heart Etat Libre d'Orange Jasmin et Cigarettes, which is an entirely different kind of jasmine.Only the jasmine flower, with its endless spectrum of facets — citrus, green, floral and animalistic — was able to express the profusion of emotions that I wanted to communicate with this scent: the beginning of love marked with excitement, the fear of the unknown, and, ultimately, the surrender to love!
To express this complexity of emotions, I did not want a Jasmine that would smell too composed or too adorned, but rather exaggerated within its two most dramatic facets: erotic and sacred.
Notes: Bergamot, petit grain, cypress, jasmine, orange blossom, ylang-ylang and cistus.
And now I dance with a third. One of the most impressive things about Love and Tears is how smooth the opening is. I get some bergamot there at the beginning, but mostly I get this smooth terrific wallop of jasmine. I like the way the orange blossom gives it a bit of a drier texture, and takes down some of the soapiness. Patty mentioned there was a light indolent edge, and it took three tries before I found it, but there it is, in the form of cistus. It actually dirties up the scent, not in a sexy way, but in an actual dirt way, musky in a musty basement way. Jasmine in the garden, as opposed to sexy jasmine on a beach or sexy girl in a smokey bar bathroom, rouging behind her knees with jasmine solid perfume.
If you like jasmine, I think you'll like this. It's really quite pretty. For those of you unsure of jasmines, you may want to give this scent a full hour before you write it off. It does a good job of sidestepping the cheap soapy scent pitfalls, which is quite a jasmine tango.
Does it smell like surrender? How the hell would I know? If I had to ascribe it to a stage of love, though, surrender isn't what I think of. Instead it feels like unexamined infatuation, first date afterglow. If it were a song, I think it would be "So This is Love" from Disney's Cinderella.
Does that sound like surrender to me? No. It sounds like naivety. And while I am usually a willing victim of such blindly blissful thinking, that isn't what love ever felt like to me. But that doesn't make it unromantic. So while lovely, Love and Tears doesn't exactly fit the theme for me. My other only mild objection is $225 is quite a bling-y price tag. That said, I appreciate that By Kilian supports recycling by selling refills for their lovely bottles for half price. And if you're looking for an expensive and beautiful gift, By Kilian does a lovely job. They were even nominated for a FiFi for it.
"I'm all aglow, mmm-hm-hm-hmm,
and now I know
the key to all heaven is mine."
- "So This is Love,"
Want more reviews? Try...
~ a review from Robin at Now Smell This!
~ a review from Grain de Musc
~ a review from The Non-Blonde
~ a review from Patty at Perfume Posse
~ a review from 1000 Fragrances
~ a review from Bois de Jasmin
Perfume sample generously provided by the perfumer.
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