Review by Octavian Coifan – Natural perfume “Venezia Giardini Segreti”

Monday, june 17

VENEZIA – Giardini Segreti – La Via del Profumo – New perfume

With a magic spell, the secret door to a fabulous garden opens. It is Venice and the new outstanding jasmine perfume portrayed in VENEZIA – Giardini Segreti.

It is inspired by the “corti” — the courts of Venice that contain its secret gardens, hidden within the maze of the city — and particularly to the imaginary “Corte Sconta detta Arcana” of the “Favola di Venezia” di Corto Maltese, first discovered in the recesses of Hugo Pratt’s mind, and illustrated by his hand.
It is the story of Corto Maltese, Rasputin and Shanghai Li in a fictional story which takes place during the Russian Revolution before 1920.

Venice is like a maze, with intricate streets, stories, where past and present are merged together and fantasies become realities, at least during the Carnival. It is also a place with enclosed gardens, small spaces where odors are concentrated and rare plants were collected. Venice has a long tradition in perfumery, as it was among the first Italian cities where the secrets of the Orient were brought eight centuries ago. Books, formulae, products, ingredients, fabulous stories – from China to Byzantium and Chypre Island.

The new perfume is an outstanding composition around a green garden jasmine note. Powerful, exotic, intoxicating, yet totally innocent like a honeysuckle in bloom with touches of green tea. It suggests the previous creation from La via del profumo I presented in 2012. It is almost crispy aldehydic, with that greenness which characterizes the gardenia in bloom. A gardenia smells of mushroom too, like myrrh or opopanax, a subject I explored a long time ago in a theoretical article. The green sap of flowers is here, the perfume smells like the wonderful ligustrum which is in bloom in every Venetian garden or even the Robinia and the cypress and myrte flowers. The freshness of the sacred balms surrounds the white petals – candy flowers, both pure and sensual. The soft powdery touch of this amazing perfume evokes another special composition of the house – the pheromone blend, an amazing floral. When combined with the new gardenia dewy creation from Goutal, the result is magnificent – a most beautiful sharp lemony magnolia like those growing in Italy. “Giardini segreti” is a perfume of lightness with an unusual aura that hasn’t been achieved in recent perfumes with only one notable exception – the superb sur-mesure perfume I have from Francis Kurkdjian which is 100 times better than modern No5. Beauty grows as it is shared. The jasmine aspect of the perfume, worn in an imaginary tale by Shanghai LI, evokes the magnificent LIU (Guerlain), but this is a different type of jasmine extract in a delicate context – a jasmine with a tea aspect and candied chypre woods.

With the previous perfume I presented from La via del profumo, “Giardini Segreti” is one of the most exquisite and outstanding creations of the house – fabulous scents from another time, another place, which unlocks the door to Beauty.

“Giardini segreti” is a gift for a future love whispered in a Venetian garden with night flowers, capturing forever the spirit of Venise – the tears of Myrrh from one thousand nights, the petals of a young jasmine Prince at night, the green dew in the morning mixed with the airy ambery breeze of the Laguna. Love is the secret of the Cosmos among flowers in a Venitian preparation – La Via del Profumo.

Go to the perfume Venezia Giardini Segreti