Dusita Melodie de l'Amour

I first started hearing about Parfums Dusita after this spring's Esxense Milan. Founder Pissara Umavijani, or Ploi Uma as she more commonly goes, made quite a splash with her new line comprised of three fragrances. The buzz only intensified when Luca Turin gave an enthusiastic review to the perfumes, which can be read here.  Ploi's story started in Bangkok. Her father is the esteemed Thai poet and translator, Montri Umavijani (1941-2006), so Ploi grew up in an environment of creativity,  in a house with a lush garden full of scents that stirred her creative soul.  A childhood passion for the study of perfume and scent creation was fully realized when she moved to Paris in 2011. Ploi collaborated with a well know perfume house to create her fragrant dreams, using her father's poetry as her muse, and Dusita was born.

In Siamese context, Dusita is the search for happiness and contentment. Her perfumes are a tribute to and an expression of her father's poetry, and that this is a passion project is evident in the quality of the ingredients composing these perfumes, a quality which the nose instantly detects. The line is so far composed of three perfumes, each with its own message:

Melodie de l'Amour: which evokes the beauty and the ecstasy of being in love
Issara: offering a joyful sense of freedom and independence
Oudh Infini: which gives the joy of exotic adventures and discoveries

It is always interesting to read other's reviews of a perfume and compare it to your own experience. A review can be a guide, but one must ultimately experience the scent on your skin, as we are all unique beings. Without exception all the reviews I've read about Melodie de l'Amour have been glowing, but some experienced it as a beautiful sillage beast, others felt  the presence of strong notes of tuberose or jasmine, but in my experience it was all about the gardenia.

Dusita Melodie de l'Amour opens as the most dewy, slightly green gardenia, delicate and beautiful. I love white flowers;  tuberose, the sultry beast; jasmine, which can be sweet or slutty depending on her mood; orange blossom, precious and playful; but gardenia has always been the elusive flower for me in perfumery. Gardenia scents often starts out fine then veer into a slightly chemical screechy odor. The above photo perfectly describes the opening of Melodie de l'Amour to me, the creamy sweetness of gardenia for the short time it will bloom at its peak of perfection.  When I am in Singapore I walk the Botanic Garden almost every day. Occasionally I make the walk at dusk in order to experience the full glory of the scents. There is a designated Fragrance Garden with various white flowers that release their beautiful fragrance once the heat of the sun has dissipated. The jasmine and ylang ylang are beautiful but it is the gardenia which will stop me in my tracks. It is more elusive and finicky in perfuming the air but when you smell it, there is nothing else like it.

The life-like gardenia of Melodie de l'Amour is evident on my skin for some time but eventually I do smell the other white flowers used to make this fragrance. The tuberose and jasmine notes make their individual presence known, but I still continue to smell gardenia off and on. It is like a revolving door of the various white flowers, almost as if strolling through a garden and coming across first one flower, then another.  The top notes listed for Melodie de l'Amour are gardenia, tuberose, and a blend of 150 white flowers,  all of this enhanced by wild honey. The honey smell is not strong, but just a backdrop to sweeten the intensity of the blooms. The bees would certainly be attracted to the blossoms of this flower and their honey would definitely be fragrant. This is the synergy I get from the honey notes blended with the white florals.

As time passes Melodie de l'Amour develops mid notes of peach, Italian broom flower, lily of the valley, and jasmine. These notes are expertly blended and not pronounced on my skin. Hours later the perfume settles into base notes of cedarwood oil and musk. If you are timid in wearing white flower perfumes than this may be more of a statement perfume for you. I am of the school, "Go big or go home," so to me the white flowers are a lovely expression of beauty and I find wearing Melodie de l'Amour uplifting. Ploi Uma has achieved her goal of creating a perfume that is a fragrant expression of the joy of being in love.

Top photo Google images. Bottom photo Dusita website. My sample was provided by the perfumer.