by: Serguey Borisov
I was not expecting any mail from the Netherlands, and a heavy package from the Puredistance company happened to be a pleasant surprise for me. Inside the package I found what can be called the most luxurious packaging of a perfume sample in the world: a lacquered wooden box (size A4), with a white top and black underneath. A brass oval plaquette with the name of the perfume brand etched by laser is glued to the top. A gilded frame inside with white satin on which the tube in a white branded silk bag tied with a black bow was attached, along with a very touching detail in the form of dry chamomile flower.
I found the perfume name only on the spray glass tube: Puredistance White. Well, after the mysterious Puredistance Black fragrance from 2013, it's time to release its antipode.
By itself, the fragrance is a warm, powdery, floral with soft woody musky halo—it smells like a classic and timeless first of all, by its form and content. It seems like a good friend whose face is very familiar, whom you have met quite often, and even greeted with a happy smile, but never can remember her name and surname.
Chanel? Dior? Guerlain? Caron? Houbigant? I could not nail a particular brand and perfume. Its familiar features are reminiscent of Christian Dior J'Adore in its different forms, Bois des Iles and №22 Chanel, Caron Parfum Sacre also, but is not congruent to any of them perfectly. So do not expect something original, unusual, that breaks the patterns of feminine fragrances from Puredistance White—on the contrary, it is one of the most comforting feminine fragrances, warm and embracing. An archetypal “mother's scent,” either perfume or expensive cosmetics.
From the accompanying booklet, I found out what was the main idea of the scent and the task for the perfumer Antoine Lie—he had to create a fragrance of happiness.
No wonder that it took 18 months for the perfumer to make Jan Ewoud Vos and his entire Puredistance team happy. A positive and wonderful aroma, the lowest common denominator of happiness—but we should remember “everyone understands in his own way what happiness is.” How does one pour in a bottle all the olfactory impressions of so many different kinds of happiness? The happiness of chocolate mousse and of your favorite song that makes you shiver all over? The happiness of champagne with strawberries and of a new smooth cool silk shirt on the naked body? The happiness from the warm embrace of sweet baby just awakened and a first step into the tropical warm surf on your well-deserved holidays? That's just incredible that Antoine did this!
The perfume was introduced at the latest Esxence in Milan
It's a surprisingly pleasant smell without edges. I like it, as does my son. My wife is very fond of it, and in my family we immediately began to recognize the smell. You know, I even conducted an experiment involving my one-year-old daughter out of curiosity (even better that she does not talk yet). I held her in my arms and brought perfumed spots on my hands to her nose for short periods of time (just to breathe). Would there be some reaction? Out of the four floral-powdery basenotes my daughter smiled only once, and it was—you guessed it—at Puredistance White! After six hours the smell was not strong or complicated, but that was enough for a child's smile. (Of course, the second and third time the experiment failed, but for the first time I felt like in a magical fairy tale: “did this really happen to me?”)
Puredistance White is pleasantly persistent (more than 10 hours as for now), but it is a completely quiet and long-lasting perfume. Like gently glowing gossamer, which is light and fragile, swaying in any breeze, but is stronger than metal of the same diameter by its characteristics. Of course, White is a perfume extract, like every other Puredistance fragrance, and made with quite a huge concentration (38%), so I would advise you not to put it on your clothes, especially on silk—the perfume leaves an oily shining spot on my skin.
It starts with sweet creamy monolithic accord, like luminous column of light, in which is mixed so much: lactone sweetness and tonka bean, silky flower petals and desserts melting in the mouth, the quiet sweetness of sandalwood and chamomile hand cream, a delicate powder aroma and the pleasant smell characteristic to expensive women's cosmetics. And gradually, individual sparks and petals show themselves in this tender radiance—some rosy flowers, a sandalwood material similar to Javanol, something sweet like vanilla and lactones, earthy shadows, satin silk iris, and a fluffy warm musk-centered chord. This column of light is not a pyramid of changes, it's a single obelisk of smell—mostly feminine smell, that is clear from the start. One could build some philosophy about musks as a prevailingly female material.
Strongly out of focus you could see a figure of a woman in the column of light. In her blurry outlines you can find any desired meaning: happiness, warmth, mommy, comfort, love, mutual dissolution, positive, comfort, peace. It is a self-affirmation mostly. The main thing—there is no negative feeling in this light.
Some years ago I was thinking about changes in modern perfumery. What happened to it? Why are some perfumes are so heavenly good and resonant to souls, and the others are just smells? I found the answer in the film Million Dollar Baby by Clint Eastwood. That's the Mo chuisle factor. Some perfumes have it but the majority of perfumes just don`t—people could feel it, too. I believe that during those 18 months White Puredistance became a part of life for both the perfumer and the art director. And I can feel that.
... And dry chamomile happens to be a symbol of Puredistance White fragrance, this artless sunny flower symbolizing happiness. The color scheme of chamomile repeats the fragrance motto, "A Dream in White & Gold."
Puredistance White
Notes: Bergamot, May Rose, Iris, Sandalwood, Tonka beans, Vetiver, Patchouli, Musks.
Notes: Bergamot, May Rose, Iris, Sandalwood, Tonka beans, Vetiver, Patchouli, Musks.
