lily
 I have a neighbour who is a darling. From time to time, when visiting a market in Austria, she brings me flowers, just like that. Usually it’s Lilies. A bunch of lilies, white as the laundry on TV after a thorough but easy wash with xyz. -Your kid can dive in motoroil, a little bit of this and that, a washing machine and bang! the Nike T-shirt comes out cleaner than it was when it left mainland China to be sold for 50 $ in a hip shop in NY after a journey from one side of this globe to the other. Arrived and sold, it makes a Chinese worker more or less happy because she earned 1 cent for it, and one house wife smiles two weeks later in her loundry room because her youngster has a white T-shirt again and she is loved by her family, admired by her friends and full of self-esteem for her washing skills. By the way: There are quite a few men, too doing the washing and worrying about grades of white…
If my goldfish memory (see earlier post) wouldn’t have failed me, you would see a picture of my lilies. I forgot to store them on the webserver and can not access my local computer right now….thus: Lilies picture follows later.
The lilies sit in my living room and transform it (scent-wise) into a church right before the funeral, with the coffin standing in the middle, the house wife before it, looking forward not to have to wash white shirts anymore. A first sniff when getting up in the morning is most agreable, a creamy, heavy, white flower like scent, without the sexual arrousing quality of Jasmine, though, more on the elegant and expensive side. There is powder quality that is wonderful, the scent is fresh and heavy somehow, which is difficult to reconstitute…A second sniff, sitting in the kitchen and watching the white flowers, thinking about life of house wifes and death, is already less exciting and after half an hour it is time to open the windows and let some fresh air in.
It is just too much. Like sitting early in the morning in public transport behind lots of artfully arranged hair, thanks to tons of hairspray proofing that gravity can be annihilated, and being drowned in clouds of fragrance waves that might be supportable in the evening when your nose is tired and the night calls for adventures, but not in early morning sun when you’re still trying to figure out where all your energy has gone over night. Because I have this white wonder flowers at home right now, I was comparing their natural scent with some synthetics I have, like Lyral which is described as Lily scent. I haven’t used any Lyral so far in any creations, it is not one of my preferred notes, and it is just one single line, far from coming close to what is happening in my living room right now. Lilial on the other hand (which is described in the specs to be more on the lily of the valley side, which is true) would bring in the powdery aspect, but misses the tonality completely.
The bottom line of all this: Even natural flower’s scent can become somewhat obnoxious, to reconstitute a lily scent without it becoming obnoxious too might be tricky, I know now why so far I have never worked on such a lily thing, and Chinese workers on the other side of this globe very often do not get a fair salary.
August 18th, 2006 at 8:10 am
HI Andy,
Very interesting perception of Lilies - they are my favorite flower and I simply cannot get enough of their fragrance. I would disagree that they are not “sexy” though - many of them are, which is why I like them so much! A few are disturbing to some people, while other people cannot tolerate them at all, no matter how sweet and pleasant the perfume. There seems to be very little middle ground with them. For myself, I can keep a bouquet in my bedroom with no problems, except that the scent makes me think of other things before I sleep…but I will say no more about that. :-)
August 18th, 2006 at 8:25 am
Dear Flora
Maybe the Living Room is the wrong place to keep them…. I have to try them out in my bedroom (hehehe). This night the flowers were on the balcony. I wanted to get a lily-free living room!
You are - of course- right saying that they are sexy in a sense. I do not formulate this accurately enough: I wanted to compare them with the sexyness of Jasmine (for me the gold standard….) and I wanted to express that they are less sexy… but this might be differently received once they are standing in the bedroom…to be tested ;-)
August 20th, 2006 at 3:09 am
I don’t know why I forgot to mention this, but I should since I think it will tickle you to hear it.
Fred rarely takes notice of flowers, except to, uh, mark his territory on them.
My father grows easter lillies in his flower bed, which oddly tend to bloom up towards the end of winter here. We were visiting when Fred was still a puppy, just chit chatting. All of a sudden we saw Dad looking out the back window while shrieking in panic, “OH GOD, someone get Fred, he’s at the lily, and I think he’s eating it! Lillies are poisonous to dogs! He’s going to get sick!” He and I both ran out, but Fred wasn’t eating it, he just had buried his nose into the bloom, and was sniffing and smelling deeply. Again and again. He does it all the time with easter lillies now, which… I don’t know what to make of that. It’s some sort of dog magnet smell, I guess? Or maybe just a Fred magnet?
August 20th, 2006 at 5:57 pm
Dear Katie
Freddy boy would make the ideal companion of a perfumer. He for sure is the ideal companion of a perfume lover, too. Your story reminds me of my mom’s poodle. I once worked with Jasmine absolute and a drop landed on my trousers, before visiting mom. The poodle almost went crazy, sniffing and sniffing on my trousers. She probably couldn’t believe her nose… There most be something in Jasmine that is irresistible to her. I wonder what she would do in a jasmine field…..So, there seems to exist a poddle magnet, too.