Fleurissimo

I have been a perfume freak for years. I got into it pretty majorly about five or six years ago - I have a fairly diverse collection and I love to review perfumes and read about perfumes. I'm not an expert, but it's a big passion for me. Fragrances can have interesting stories behind them and some of their ingredients can be particularly special. I guess you could say that they have personalities that arise from their histories and the selection of notes. A floral may be a floral, most people might not find there's much more to a fragrance than the family it falls under, but to a perfume lover or to a woman choosing a perfume, it goes deeper than that. White flowers? Wild flowers? Rich base notes? Fruity accords?  When you come to care about the facets of each perfume, the differences between fragrances and their individuality becomes ever more apparent.

Having been exposed to a world of perfume and knowing a lot about what makes them special, it's easy to love them all, and very difficult to choose just one that you'll wear for something really huge - like your wedding day.  On your wedding day, everything is carefully chosen. The earrings are carefully selected, choosing a dress is extremely hard (Narrowing down one dress? Out of thousands?). Likewise a perfume is hard to choose. Do you go with something traditional? Maybe you choose the one that's most you, one you've been known to wear a lot. Choosing a fragrance you've favoured is never a bad way to go. Personally, I have had something special in mind for a very long time, and wearing it to my wedding still seems perfect.

Along the years, I came across the house of Creed. Something about Angelina Jolie and Michelle Obama led me to Love In White, and suddenly I was fascinated with the House and I got to reading the background for some of their fragrances. One of the ones that caught my eye was Fleurissimo. I ended up ordering a decant of Love In White, and with it a very small sample of Fleurissimo. It was super exciting when they came in. I wore Love In White a lot, but I ended up not loving it as much as Fleurrissimo. I didn't expect to be more excited by this simple floral than I originally was about L.I.W. which had originally gotten my attention.

Fleurissimo wasn't the simple floral I expected. It is a fresh juicy floral in the beginning, but it opens into a robust bouquet of Tuberose, Florentine Iris and Parma Violet, with a soft musky base of Ambergris.  This floral has a great deal of body and elegance at the same time - and a very romantic back-story. Creed has a long history of creating bespoke fragrances specifically for prominent socio-political figures (most of royal standing), and the tradition was carried forward with Grace Kelly, an absolutely beautiful (seriously, do a Google search, this woman was radiant) American actress who was huge in the states (see Rear Window and Dial M for Murder, some major acting chops at play), whose fiancé Prince Rainier of Monaco had a fragrance made for her specially for their wedding day. It echoed the flowers that made up her bouquet. So romantic. This was what she wore when she became a princess and married the love of her life. Doesn't get more romantic than that. 

Grace Kelly had amazing taste and personal style. I don't think anyone was surprised for instance to see her wedding gown reappear in Kate Middleton's design. It's a timeless cut that will always look elegant. To me, the whole thing is embodied in this perfume - the beauty of the woman, the style and taste she exuded, the wonderful fairytale love story, and the scent of the bouquet she carried down the isle. Fleurissimo carries the cache of a long standing and ridiculously exclusive perfume house est. 1760 operating by royal decree, and the eternal joy of one of history's most beautiful brides.

This is the fragrance I've since had in mind for my wedding, and two days ago, my bottle came in the mail. It is bigger than I expected and the packaging was wowingly fancy. The green oval on the box is velour. Everything is etched in gold. It's embossed all over in Creed seals. The information on the bottom of the bottle is frosted on. That bridal feeling really hit me when I opened it.