Un Coeur en Mai
MDCI (2009)

When I first tried Un Coeur de Mai, I did something I usually never do – putting just a puff of it on the back of my arm (I'm a ‘full body wear or bust' kind of guy). And those impressions were quite misleading – I got something stolidly classical, a bit like a dowager's corset, that smelled of spicy carnations and soap. It made me think of Patricia de Nicolai's grounding in perfumery tradition in an unkind way – this seemed like a period piece, a bit dated and out of place.
But all that changed with a proper, more generous, wear of the perfume – it suddenly bounced around me with the vigour and verdancy of spring. Sure the composition was classical in its deployment of a strong pepper note among the melange of feathery florals and greens, and the firm backing of a powdery woody base. But the impressionistic liveliness of the floral meadow it conjured charmed me. Here were heady floral notes – hyacinth, lily of the valley, geranium – presented with a twinkling lightness and the greens spun out and airy. Yes, parts of it smell like old-fashioned mixed bouquet floral soaps, but the stolidity had gone. Wear me in anticipation of the summer sun and be content, it seems to say on blustery, rain-swept days.
However, it's difficult to prolong all this buoyancy – and had Un Coeur de Mai faded after a few hours it would have been perfect. But it is in de Nicolai's gift to give us all-dayers and the later stages return me to carnations and soap, and matrons pacing grey corridors, which I no longer mind after the joy of what went before.
(kumquat's review seems to suggest that Un Coeur de Mai has been re-jigged recently; I think I bought my decant before then, some five years ago.)

This review is for the second version. The first version was a flower-bomb of mimosa which gave me a headache. This improved juice is just right with its light galbanum, hyacinth, lotv and coriander base presenting a fairy-light green reminiscent of fireflies on a summer night. Pale, fresh, cool green. Never overpowering or boring, just lilting and poetic. Clean, a tiny bit soapy but also smelling of grass and a cool breeze. This one is just right for a hot, humid day. Not too loud or too soft, ideal. The scent of a lily-of-the-valley bouquet mixed with hyacinths.

The opening blast of white florals, including muguet, a lovely rose, hyacinth, whiffs of geranium, oleander and bergamot. A beautiful floral bouquet, bright and like a spring day in the English countryside.

After the first hour or so this floral still-life collapses and the idyllic canvas is torn apart, revealing a far less exciting picture beneath. A rather synthetic slightly spicy musk-based woodsy drydown wot hints of coriander is generic and unexciting.

I get moderate sillage and good projection initially, but after an hour it is very close to my skin - it lasts six hours.

The beauty of the top notes is indisputable, but so is the mediocrity of the drydown. Overall this results in a - barely - positive score. 3/5.

I concur with the English countryside reviews below. Relaxing at a garden party/picnic in Spring in a crisp white dress, sitting under a parasol. Extremely refined.
You have to sort be an Un Coeur En Mai type for this one, but if you are, it's Holy Grail material.

Un Coeur en Meh is prim and proper green floral with an old-fashioned feel that's nicely put together and intensely realistic. It has a sort of idyllic English country garden thing going on; it's the kind of perfume that would fit in well at some high-society social luncheon where everyone keeps on saying shit like “Oh Lady Genevieve-von-Tittington, you are just terrible!” over and over. Overall, it's a pretty, spring-like, crisp thing, but maybe a tad too characterless in the end. Decently spun, and definitely fits in well with the line's aesthetic (simulations of utterly ancient perfume), and I imagine that this is what the lady in Jean-Honore Fragonard's The Swing (1766) is wearing while flashing her bloomers.

Springtime in a bottle?

It is green and soft, alright, and the top notes make you catch your breath and go "Wow! This is so natural smelling!" However, the green note is underpinned by an almost aggressive soapiness, and soon it stops feeling so natural. I guess that natural green notes are difficult to keep suspended in a fragrance, and that it is inevitable that an initial soft/natural feel gives way to the synthetics necessary to extend the notes out further than the initial burst. But still, I wish I wasn't made so aware of the underpinning mechanics responsible for the overall effect here.

Lily-of-the-valley is predominant among all the green floral notes, which is problematic for me, since my smell associations with LOTV are of a popular hand wash from Marks and Spencers that everybody used back in the nineties (well, in my town at least). So, the fact that this note is linked in my scent memory to a chemical hygiene product doesn't do much in the way of endearing me to it. Not the scent's fault, just my own personal difficulty with this note. Also, I have to say that the LOTV note reminds me of Patricia de Nicolai's own Odalisque, which I found aggressively green, cheap-smelling, and powerhouse white-floral-y (a bad experience for me personally). This one is better, but not by much. I find it soapy, green in a synthetic way, and quite penetrating.

If you want a truly superb green, spring-smelling fragrance, then you can do no better than de Nicolai's own Le Temps d'Une Fete, Guerlain's Chamade, or Sisley's Eau de Campagne. This one costs a lot more money and comes off as smelling about ten times as cheap.