Nymphaea Caerulea
Régime des Fleurs (2014)

$425 for 8ml is the price of this one. Granted, the materials are its calling card (some rare and very spendy extractions clearly went into this) but it's not a standout scent in of itself and it doesn't showcase the various blue lotuses in a way that they deserve.

Essentially, it's a sweet, syrupy floral with some powdery green nuances peeking through. Even though the lotus flowers–materials that function more as a fixative than as a featured note–are quadruple-layered, there's a tuberose in this that absolutely dominates everything else rendering many of the other ingredients–specifically the lotus flowers and the ambergris–as pointless. I can pick up a touch of what I think must be jasmine, but the overall effect is surprisingly unilateral, murky, and dull. If you're featuring something as insanely delicate as blue lotus absolutes, don't bludgeon them with nuclear absolutes and synthetics. It goes to show that it takes far more than radically pricey raw materials to compose a good perfume.

Last year, I had the opportunity to smell a rare hydro-distilled blue lotus from India that retails for around $250 per ml. Obviously, it was mind-blowing and profoundly limited due to production, but it also smelled notably different to what's going on here. Blue lotus has a peaceful and delicate profile with a distinct watery facet–a little like ylang, only more diaphanous. If you can push beyond the powdery tuberose of this scent, what lotus does exist feels more chalky and convoluted. Consequently, I couldn't recommend this as a blue lotus fragrance–but then again, I don't know if a good solinote exists anywhere of this particular flower. The bottom line is that this is a messy and amateurish attempt to namedrop rare essences far more than it is an attempt to emphasize them. You'd be better suited tracking down a fantastic extraction and diluting it yourself. A wasted opportunity to do something special.