Heeley
Heeley
145 votes
A unique visual signature based on accords, character, and seasonality
The first quarter-hour explodes with a citrus assault—bergapot's pinched brightness cuts sharply against the honeyed warmth of mandarin, whilst lemon and orange fight for supremacy. It's crystalline and almost clarifying, like opening a window on a bright morning.
As the top notes' initial aggression settles (around the 90-minute mark), the Earl Grey tea emerges with considerable grace, tempering the citrus's exuberance with a subtle dusty-floral quality. The neroli blooms softly, working alongside petitgrain to create a greener, more sophisticated heart that feels almost aromatic.
The base reveals itself gradually, with vetiver introducing a whisper of earth and structure whilst ylang ylang adds creamy, faintly tropical warmth. What remains is a gentle, refined whisper of warm citrus touched with florality—closer to skin scent than projection, though fading steadily after the four-hour mark.
Oranges and Lemons is a fragrance that commits entirely to its premise—a candied brightness that never apologises for its sweetness. James Heeley constructs something genuinely playful here, where the bergamot and lemon dance with mandarin and orange in a polytonal citrus chord that avoids the typical cloying trap by virtue of its sheer specificity. This isn't the abstract "citrus" of mass-market freshness; the interplay between the sharp volatility of lemon and bergamot against the rounder, almost jammy quality of mandarin creates an almost three-dimensional quality, as though you're smelling the whole fruit rather than its essence in isolation.
Where the fragrance truly distinguishes itself is the neroli-Earl Grey tea heart, which introduces a subtle floral restraint that prevents this from becoming a one-dimensional bright floral. The Earl Grey in particular—that bergamot-inflected black tea—speaks directly to the citrus in a knowing, almost conversational way, adding a dusty, slightly astringent counterpoint that prevents the sweetness from ever becoming cloying. Petitgrain supplies an additional green, almost herbal note that anchors the composition.
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3.9/5 (83)