Sunday, June 1, 2008

ormande jayne man and woman

I finally got my nose back after my cold, and while I haven't had a chance to do a whole lot with it, I have really been enjoying the Ormande Jayne sampler set I received in the mail a couple of weeks ago. Perfumes from this line seem to pop up a lot when I am reading perfume blogs - most often, it seems, Ta'if and Ormonde Man. I am working my way through the samplers and I am here to tell you that they are all good so far. A couple of them - Frangipani and Ormonde Man - are fast becoming favorites.

When my family was living in Micronesia, we had frangipani trees in the yard, and I can still remember their distinctively sweet, milky, gingery smell. Frangipani the perfume smells a bit different from my memory of the flower, but it is recognizable, and I love it so much I am having a hard time tearing myself away from it to try some of the others. But I did manage to also spritz two perfumes - Ormonde Jayne Man and Ormonde Jayne Woman - on either wrist this evening. Ormonde Jayne Man is another one that I pretty much adored from the first sniff - very peppery without being annoying, with some nice woods, including oud - and this will go on my growing list of masculine scents that I can't resist. Ormonde Jayne Woman is wonderful - soft spices somehow paired with dark greens, among other things. This is a captivating, complex perfume, and while it didn't grab me instantly like the other two, I know that I will be going back to it, like a particularly good Edith Wharton novel.