Le Galion Sortilège (2014)

Since1935 Paul Vacher signed Le Galion fragrances leaving over forty years a great aesthetic and creative heritage. Starting from the original formulations nine eau de parfum have been reconstructed to inaugurate its rebirth. Among many successes from the past like Bourrasque, Brumes and others, what to chose? No doubt on the first, Sortilège, the most emblematic and complex of the house that I liked most of all together with other two juices.

What immediately strikes about Sortilège is the name that's easy to remember also thanks to unmistakable assonances. I can't help it but it remembers me of an old advertising showing a mermaid, Lorelei maybe or Rusalka singing at the moon her spell accompanied by the arpeggios of a lyre. Sortilège opens with the soapy sparkle of aldehydes across citrus, rose and lilac rendering the typical ladylike elegance of  old school aldehydic florals all about gloves and three-quarter length sleeves. Soon the languid jasmin joins together with a pulpy peach covering the fragrance in velvet and making everything clear. I never happened to smell the original formula but it seems like a decade later Vacher wanted to remake a more modern and luminous Arpège, adding a joyful feminine key Marie Duchêne (Patchouli Nobile, Laboratorio Olfattivo Alkemi) succeeds to enhance with a strawberry facet that doesn't yield a bit of class. The base is a floral symphony, above all rose, orange blossom, ylang-ylang and narcissus laying on a sandalwood, vetiver and iris bed veiled by a chypre accord with real oakmoss surely nowadays lighter and less animalic yet still mellow, enveloping and longlasting.