Songes à Fleurs
Parfum, Darren Alan (2024)

[Originally written June 12, 2024]

As spring turns into summer, there's a bittersweet feeling of saying goodbye to a season once more, and wearing Songes à Fleurs ("Dreams of Flowers") by Darren Alan on a June evening is like sitting while the credits roll after watching a moving film at the cinema, reflecting on all that was witnessed. The exuberant aldehydes that open it recall that of the old Lanvins, Weils, and Carons, setting the stage for flowers angling themselves towards the filtered sunlight, desperate to leave the legacy of their DNA before the heat wilts them. Before you know it, the lilies of the valley turn into silent, poisonous green berries; carnation pink ruffles become dog-eared and brown; broom yellow remains sweet 'til their petals cease.

What's most noticeable are the wormwood and tarragon here, the sharp herbaceousness reminding me of when plants such as these swallow the landscape as the solstice advances. Darren Alan uses a Mousse de Saxe base here, its deep, dark woody shape feeling like a ghost light, a will o' the wisp. A weary heart sometimes needs a good mystery to lose oneself in.

Saying farewell to spring never felt so profound as it does this year, and Songes à Fleurs has made a perfect companion.

Songes à Fleurs by Darren Alan (2024) is a very old-school 1970's "yellow" floral as I like to call them, in a style not often pursued by designers or grand French houses like Guerlain or Caron at the time; but it is something more akin to what Avon, Mary Kay, Revlon, Matchabelli, Charles of the Ritz, or Elizabeth Arden was putting on drug store shelves and in the order-bags of sales representatives. I say this full well as a compliment, because designer chypres of that period were all about being bitterly green and stemmy, or cold white light floral treatments that read as "boss lady", because the en vogue thing was to be obstinately independent in demeanor (for women), while men's designs were headed down the he-man knuckle-dragger or big-belt-buckle brawler route. Standing next to those, these idyllic and bucolic odes to fields of wildflowers sold at the entry level seemed naive in their attempt at being friendly and demur. Still, there is something about them.

The opening of Songes à Fleurs really takes me back to something like Field Flowers by Avon (1974) with it's golden aldehydes and sweet citrus over muguet and carnation. Rose and jasmine fill in the spaces classically, while gardenia and heliotrope also set up this "wildflower" accord that almost reminds me somewhat of marigolds in a tangential way. Orange blossom sweetens the whole arrangement, while genet (not to be confused with the animal), is a small yellow shrub that imparts a warmth to the composition. The base should be familiar to fans of the house by now, as it rides in a classic chypre vein, with oakmoss and sandalwood, tonkin musk, vetiver and a mousse de saxe accord, the "good stuff" for vintage aficionados that still blame chemicals ambroxan or calone for bringing about the end times. I save the yelling at the usual "I know what I like and I like what I know, you know" types for another time; but we can all agree tin foil hat or not that this is really good, right?

Overall, this is a classic floral chypre of a type that was once way more common than most these days would know, as time and ever-quickening trend (along with production cycles) have churned and paved over cultural memory of even twenty years ago for many terminally-online people nowadays. If you go beyond the first dozen or so links worth of Google search, or actually, I don't know, pick up a physical book sometime or watch a movie made in the 20th century, you might know that things like Charlie by Revlon (1973) were once de rigeur in women's fragrance, and this is a really top-quality homage to the theme of those fragrances. That isn't to say Songes à Fleurs is copying anything, as Darren Alan hasn't really had experience with any fragrances I've mentioned prior to him composing this scent, he's just so spot-on with his own knowledge of perfume composition history that he just knew how to reach the same conclusion as perfumers fifty years ago. Thumbs up