Hilde Soliani is an incredible perfumer from Italy. She's also an artist and a big-time foodie. So a lot of her perfumes are influenced by different kinds of cuisine, different kinds of desserts. She leans heavily into the gourmand category and so if you're a gourmand fan, I highly recommend that you check her out.
It was hard to pick just one of her perfumes that I love because I love so many of them, but one of my all-time favorites is called Il Tempo delle Mele, which in Italian means—or in English means—the Time of Apples. Its inspiration is a very specific type of Italian apple cake, and that's definitely what you're going to get when you smell this. There is vanilla, milk, and apple note that are listed in the notes. So when you hear that and you think of it, you're like, okay, this is going to be very sweet, like maybe apple pie or something like that.
However, what I really get is this tart, crisp, almost sort of like a green apple freshness at the top. Not exactly the caramelized heavy, rich, really decadent kind of apple pie, but more like a mouth-watering juicy apple. There is this kind of milky note which lactic notes can be hit or miss depending on, you know, who's doing it. She is known for them and does them really, really well. It's not too milky; it's just this nice kind of soft creamy fluffiness, I guess, with this hint of vanilla.
What I also kind of get in the dry down—this is not listed in the notes, so Hildy don't kill me—but I do get a little bit of this almost like patchouli dry down on my skin. Maybe it's just on me, but it definitely has this touch of earthiness that sort of comes through after the sweetness fades away, and it's really beautiful. I absolutely love the way that this dries down.
Some reviewers have mentioned it kind of reminds them
