I've just smelled this evening a big bouquet of white Madonna Lilly - an intoxicating and exceptional fragrance. Every spring when I smell natural flowers I discover new facets and see how great and unexplored are some common natural smells, how little we now about them, how many clichés we might have.
The white flowers I smelled this year are spicy and animalic, nothing to do with the pure immaculate lily note used in fragrances (and close to lily of the valley chemicals). This lily is a perfect blend of a carnation like the Dianthine base (de Laire), animalic notes like p-cresol and p-cresyl acetate plus a very strong salycilate note in the direction of amyl. It is a very simple yet powerful note that reminds me the style signature of Ernest Daltroff. The true nature of the flower seems to emerge right from a Caron bottle. The modern lily, the one that I usually work on, is lighter, airy and fresh, with a lot of benzyl salycilate and muguet compounds (lyral like), in a form that is derived from Anais Anais. But the lily that I analyzed today has the tremendous power of a nasty garden carnation, the exotic and intoxicating aroma of ylang plus a very pungent animalic note. A deadly dance - the Montague et Capulet from Prokofiev's Romeo&Juliet - where Un lys and Tubéreuse criminelle will melt their power giving birth to a magnific potion with a spicy ornament - the nutmeg and bay liqueur.
