Fleur de Lalita

Fleur de Lalita is a bouquet of tropical flowers that has grown up, moved to France, and taken up smoking and reading Baudelaire. Peel back the layers and you’ll see that its core of lush ylang ylang, tropical lilies, and magnolia remains intact. But bookended by a smoky galbanum up top and salty, lived-in ambergris down below, Fleur de Lalita is definitely a floral for adults. The playoff between milky sweetness of tropical flowers and the smoky, salty galbanum-ambergris tandem is what makes Fleur de Lalita such a tour de force.

The innocent side of Fleur de Lalita shows its face first, with a cluster of jasmine, magnolia, and lily so wet and crisp it might have been cut from the garden just moments before. Curlicues of buttery ylang ylang snake around the white petals as you bury your face in this bouquet, releasing a steamy tropical undercurrent. But the damp lushness of the flowers is almost immediately cut by a waft of galbanum, a green resin whose smell is pitched halfway between freshly-cut plant stems and smoke. The effect is of being in a tropical garden while someone is smoking an illicit cigarette in a nearby ylang bush, the smoke mingling gently with the creamy flowers. A dash of resinous sandalwood gives the florals and greenery a handsome backbone. But the real payoff comes in the base, when musky ambrette wraps around natural ambergris to form a sweet and salty skin-like nuance that will send you over the top. The combination of creamy florals, crisp greenery, smoke, and salty musks in Fleur de Lalita is simply stunning. This is the fragrance that will make you feel like the best version of yourself, every day of your life.