Pichola
Neela Vermeire (2015)

Lake Pichola in Udaipur must be an astonishing place. Quiet, serene, yet colorful and bountiful. This certainly isn’t like any lake I’ve been to before - little alone smelled. My facetiousness and inability to “connect the dots” to one side, Pichola - the perfume - is really quite gorgeous. It is one of the quietest and most serene presentations of tuberose and orange blossom I’ve smelled - that earlier part was true.

The perfume sparkles as soon as it hits skin, like colorful light bouncing off of the surface of a sapphire lake. Present are sour bergamot, zesty orange juice, and a good slug of metallic neroli for a white floral and silvery sheen. Woody and sweet hay like spices of cardamom and saffron string down to the heart to add a bit more color to the vividly white and pink tuberose and an orange… uh… orange blossom. The tuberose is its typical heady, creamy, sweet, and fleshy self but kept to remarkably good behavior. It’s not launching itself in the air as its wont to do, and I’m not pulling any histrionic green notes it can frequently have - those like its wanting to scratch out your eyes. It’s gentle, fluffy, and warm, like a purring kitten. The orange blossom is allowed to be its natural self by comparison: always sunny, sweet, aloof, happy, and carefree, it smells as it should and adds lovely color and a sunny disposition to the otherwise standoffish tuberose. The final skin scent is mostly Neela Vermeire’s much loved creamy sandalwood, albeit given a healthy dose of floral white musks that carry the brief quite convincingly. There are more musks in the base than sandalwood per my nose, but it’s without question an NVC dry down.

Very pretty and well done, and in the NVC style we’ve come to know and love it is rich, detailed, and spared no expense. It is hardly anything new or novel, but it doesn’t need to be nor does it pretend to be. It simply wants to make you smile and put a bit of sunshine in your day.

The Neela Vermeire range has a very specific marker – these perfumes refuse to let you impose your taste on the rest of the world. They project just fine in terms of the wearer being able to smell them throughout the day. But take over a room? Never. They're too well-bred. However, in terms of their pricing they positively scream: ‘Too posh for thou!' Many is the time I have almost buckled for Mohur, but then decided to carry on being stingy with my decant instead.
Pichola is no exception to the refusing-to-be-loud rule despite being a white floral. From a sparkling green neroli and orange blossom accented opening, Pichola dons a somewhat milky veil (this milkiness is becoming a Duchaufour signature), but it's supremely comforting. There's a bunch of lovely notes nuzzling under it, understated citruses from the opening, a tiny pinch of cardamom, other floral notes, jasmine and tuberose chief among them, but oh-so-fresh and polite, and a base of cloud-like softness. Pichola puts me in a mellow mood notwithstanding its overall sprightly character. It gets a bit thin later on when one gets the feeling that the main orange blossom-tuberose theme is left standing on an empty stage.
Some will think Pichola misses the point of a white floral – where's the seeping carnality or immense throw? Look elsewhere. But to feel like a just-opened blossom shaking in an April breeze, look no further.

A pleasant but hackneyed lemony floral with some buttery musk notes underneath. It opens green and bright, with a touch of tang to counter any overt sweetness, and then it kicks up into a milky almost hay-like tuberose. Over time, it fizzles out into a vanillic, blond woody base with a slight marine nuance, and that's really all there is to it. Although it's a little on the chemical side, it sidesteps harshness and never threatens to cloy. Articulate, Duchaufourian, but ultimately, it's just a basic white floral sans any flare or personality to make it stand out.