Vilhelm Parfumerie
Vilhelm Parfumerie
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A unique visual signature based on accords, character, and seasonality
The first spray delivers a proper smack of sour-sharp blackcurrant and green apple, acidic enough to make your mouth water, with bergamot's citrus oil cutting through like a cold knife. There's an almost effervescent quality, as if someone's muddled fruit with tonic water, before heliotrope's powdery-almond facets begin their slow creep into the composition. It's bright, tart, and unapologetically fruity—but there's already that hint of something more cerebral lurking beneath.
As the fruit recedes, tea leaves emerge with their dry, slightly bitter tannins, creating an unexpected sophistication that completely reframes the sweetness. The heliotrope blooms fully now, bringing its characteristic marzipan quality whilst those green notes—still present, still vital—add a crushed-stem freshness that keeps everything lifted. This phase is where Dear Polly reveals itself as genuinely complex: fruity yet dry, sweet yet astringent, soft yet present.
What remains is a skin-close veil of vanilla-tinged musk with cedarwood providing gentle structure and tonka's hay-like sweetness adding warmth. The fruit has vanished entirely, leaving only sense memory and the faintest powdery echo of heliotrope. It's the olfactory equivalent of cashmere worn close to skin—intimate, comforting, with just enough woody dryness to prevent it becoming too plush or soporific.
Dear Polly is a study in contrasts—the crisp bite of tart blackcurrant and barely-ripe apple wrapped in heliotrope's almondy softness. This isn't your typical fruity floral; Jérôme Epinette has crafted something altogether more nuanced, where tea leaves add an astringent, slightly metallic edge that keeps the fruit from veering into jam territory. The opening feels almost photorealistic—imagine running your fingers along a bergamot rind whilst biting into a Granny Smith—but it's the heart that reveals this scent's true character. That green accord isn't lawn clippings or vetiver; it's more like the pale, watery stems of flowers crushed between fingers, mingling with heliotrope's curious ability to smell both powdery and Play-Doh sweet simultaneously.
The base is where Dear Polly settles into its identity as a skin scent with backbone. The musk here isn't clean laundry; it's got texture, almost a suede-like quality that the cedarwood amplifies. Tonka and vanilla provide sweetness, but it's tempered, never cloying—think the inside of a biscuit tin rather than buttercream. This is for the woman who wears silk shirts with tailored trousers, who drinks Earl Grey at her desk and keeps a cashmere cardigan over her chair. It's polished but not corporate, sweet but not naive. Dear Polly works beautifully in that liminal space between seasons—those September mornings when you're not quite ready to abandon summer's brightness but autumn's crispness is unmistakably in the air. It whispers rather than shouts, but what it whispers is worth leaning in to hear.
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4.3/5 (9.8k)