Years ago, there was a soap called Zest. If I remember correctly, there were a few types of this soap and there was one that has a yellow packaging which has a very clean, lemony scent. It was very fresh and well…zesty and because of it, I always associate lemony scent with that fresh-out-of-the-shower feeling.
However, there aren’t many lemon fragrances done right in the market. Scents from drugstore brands often smell more like car freshener and when prestige brands use lemon notes in their high-end perfumes, it is often mixed with other notes in a complex composition and while some of them are really good, they have already lost the “simple and clean” aroma that one needs to reproduce the after-shower sensation.
Then of course we can’t talk about this topic without mentioning CLEAN perfumes, a brand that is built around that very theme: clean, just-get-out-of-the-shower scents. Clean has a few fragrances under their line: the most famous one is the original Clean EDP. According to Sephora, the notes are notes of litsea cubeba, orange, sweet lime, pink grapefruit, passion lily, rose geranium, and white musk and it’s “the ideal fragrance option for those that prefer that just-out-of-the-shower fresh smell. Each mist begins with a fresh blast of freshness and dries down to a soft, squeaky-clean finish.” I happened to sniff this fragrance at B18 a couple of years ago and to me it just smells like soap. Not particularly expensive, great-smelling soap either, just generic soap. And since it was sold for almost 1 million rupiah in B18, I quickly put it back to the shelf and walked away. Shelling out that much money to smell like cheap soap? No thanks.
Anyways, since I’m not in particular looking for these types of fragrances, I never really give them that much thought. Then the nice people at L’occitane sent me a box of their newest summer fragrance: Verveine Soleil or Sun Verbena. Verbena is one of the brand’s line and every year they launch a limited-edition spin off of the fragrances. This year, L’occitane releases a few products under Sun Verbena, such as EDT, Milky Fragrance Mist, Protective Body Lotion SPF 15, Fresh Face Mist and Protective Gloss SPF 15. The one I got to sample is the Sun Verbena Milky Fragrance Mist.
Just like the name suggests, it comes in a super light milky lotion formula. I thought this would just be a body spray and that the scent would be too light to be considered a fragrance. But I was wrong because when I first sprayed it on, I got a big, sparkling whiff of green-lemony scents, just like the smell I got when I grate lemon peel to be used for cooking. The lotion absorbs at a lightning speed to my skin and leaves me with a nice, cooling sensation. The scent itself is very bright and refreshing citrus with just a hint of green notes and surprisingly it lasts a long long time. The notes (0f the EDT) are Verbena, Lemon and Grapefruit with a heart of Orange Blossom, Citrus Zest and Jasmine, grounded in a base of Vetiver, Cedar and Musks. The milky fragrance also contains no alcohol so it’s just the perfect thing to wear when you know you will be out all day and sweating under Jakarta’s unbelievably scorching sun.
When I first put it on and wear it the whole day, what crossed my mind was “THIS is what fresh-out-of-the-shower scent is like.” Yes, it smells like citrusy soap but a well-made, expensive soap that’s going to leave you feeling fresh and energized the whole day. And it might be able to save you during one those times when you just come from under the sun, your whole hair and clothes have that “bau matahari” everyone so detests, yet you need to meet people and need to smell great.
L’occitane Verbena Sun Milky Fragrance Mist will be available at all L’occitane shops starting 26th of August and retails for Rp. 365.000
