Osmanthe Joyeux
Maison Rebatchi

Osmanthe Joyeux, by Maurice Roucel, is an interesting take on osmanthus. It features a suede heart so clean and rubbery you can hear it squeak but processed through a white floral filter (mostly tuberose) that blurs the image. We all know how difficult it is to subdue tuberose, but Roucel obviously runs a tight ship. The tuberose is here strictly as a modulating agent rather than as star (it is furiously writing letters to the editor as we speak).

There are two main movements to Osmanthe Joyeux. The first is that dusty-rubbery suede accord, which smells like your hands after you’ve just taken off a pair of yellow rubber cleaning gloves (faintly powdered, latexy skin). The second occurs when the white floral accord moves in. The tuberose adds a very interesting milk powder staleness, like spilled full-fat milk drying out on the concrete floor of a hot milking stall. I have smelled this odd dairy-dust note before, once in Blu (Bruno Acampora), which is also a tuberose fragrance, and again in Cuir d’Iris (Pierre Guillaume), which absolutely is not. This aspect adds a pleasantly animalic fullness to the suede, fleshing it out. Call this osmanthus with a twist.