Calice Becker is one of those perfumers who has been endowed with an unusual gift. Sublime and effortless grace characterizes her major creations and a profound understanding of floral scents and their delicacy. Her floral accords have the serene harmony of someone who has probably discovered a secret code of beauty in nature and this sense of equilibrium in line is similar to Raphael paintings. She doesn't create dramatic works or compositions shocking by the strangeness of their beauty. Love and Tears is a jasmine perfume that moves by the elegant interpretation of a very known flower without being at all a groundbreaking vision of the classic note. It's the delicacy and maybe a certain familiarity that makes this perfume beautiful. Very silky and smooth, not opulent and intoxicating, Love and Tears belongs to a time when the perfumery was looking for delicate and innocent fragrances with a classic elegance. This is the late 1970's and the airy combination of jasmine, green galbanum notes and hyacinth reminds at least 2 great creations - Anais Anais (Cacharel) and Givenchy III. Calice Becker gives us a retro interpretation of that era with fluid silk dresses and elegant floral perfumes, with a touch of galbanum on top and soft mosses on the drydown. The perfume is a combination of many types of jasmine notes (sambac, headspace, watery) but the focus is on the light, green and delicate petals in the morning. This is a jasmine with morning dew on it, shy but sensual, with a touch of insolent mock orange, quite opposed to the opulent evening type (often rich in dramatic sweet spicy and animalic notes). The top note of the perfume is very alluring and original with a small note that recalls the violent green animalic facet of jonquil and narcissus. This is Aurora, goddess of the dawn, who renews herself every morning. She flies across the sky, opening the gates and announcing the arrival of the Sun in its chariot with petals of Sambac jasmine. Here comes the unusual hay & horse note, delicate but with a certain violence, much like in the original top note of Le De (Givenchy).
The top note of Love and Tears evokes the fresh buds of sambac jasmine with a faint exotic note found in white tropical flowers. There is something recalling the soft sandalwood - lily of the valley note from J'adore, wrapped in sensual musks and a very delicate fruity note, and something almost champaca. It smells like the petal of flowers with its soft texture and like the bud that opens revealing for several seconds both a very green and a very animalic note. The petals of the flower created by Calice Becker, much like Anais Anais, are velvety but also powdery with a very delicate and refined woody note and a mossy accent.
Because the fresh white jasmine note is very much used in soaps and lotions you might notice this effect in Love and Tears but the perfumer gracefully avoids the bad sides. Her perfume is actually extremely feminine, maybe accentuated by a delicate tuberose/ honey jonquil or genêt note. It perfectly blends with the skin of some women as if it was their natural skinscent. Somehow the perfumer has reworked her favorites notes giving us an exceptional example of a high quality fragrance with an exquisite familiarity. In a room it has the unusual quality of a "living" perfume - its smell immediately evokes a presence both innocent and sensual. It is not the headspace of jasmine but the headspace of feminine grace that Calice Becker had captured in Love and Tears.
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Fragrance is the 8th Art - Octavian Coifan - Le Parfum est le 8ème Art
