Imagine tracing your perfect day with a timeline of perfumes that capture every moment. That’s what the fragrances of Alex Simone so beautifully encompass, and they invite you to join them in a fragrant escape to the French Riviera…
The niche house of Alex Simone first launched in 2016, in the suitably glamorous location of Monte Carlo. Originally a home fragrance brand, founder Eric Rousseau was inspired to scent every aspect of our lives, and took the decision to turn his talents to a collection of fine fragrances.
Scenting a room is very different to creating a fragrance that one wears directly on their skin, and carries about with them all day (and night…) So, Rousseau travelled to nearby Grasse – the very capital of perfumery – and there employed the help of two iconic noses to compose the perfumes. For this momentous task, master perfumers Bertrand Duchaufour and Jean Denis Saisse were given the brief of recreating a ‘perfect day’ in scented form – using the finest raw materials, and drawing on their extraordinary olfactory experience to meet the exacting briefs for each fragrance.
Using a villa in the South of France as the first fragrant stepping stone, the entire collection has been directly inspired by the region – the elegance and glamour for which it’s famed, while also beckoning us to explore and wander through six scents that capture ‘…the essence of a series of stolen moments, charting the course of a one perfect day.’
From the very beginning, this was going to be an emotional journey as well as a fragrant one; Rousseau even named the house for his grandparents, Alex and Simone. As a child, young Rousseau would help his grandfather grow and tend to a beautiful garden of flowers in Provence, and make delicious cakes with his grandmother – whimsical images we can all yearn for and identify with, conjuring up our own fragrant memories.
We have surely all experienced moments in life we’d love to capture in fragrance – ‘time travelling’ experiences of smelling something and being plunged, unbidden, into a scent memory where, suddenly, you can recall exactly the last time you visited a house, place or person associated with that scent.
We might discover that we can remember what we were wearing, the weather, a piece of music that was playing, the food we’d tasted that day… Our sense of smell really is the most incredible repository of tangible memories that, once stirred, can be revisited and treasured forever.
So which of the Alex Simone fragrances will you instantly be transported by? There’s something to entice every discerning fragrance fan – from the early morning freshness of Villa Simone, evoking those first tendrils of sunlight caressing the earth with luminescent notes of zesty bergamot, warm jasmine and cyclamen peppered with coriander and shot through with the salty spray of transparent musky marine notes. From there we might slip into a scented reverie of a late-morning rendezvous with Tellement Bleu, rapturous orange blossom drenching bergamot and juniper berries, giving way to a spiced woody heart of cardamom, coriander and black pepper, and finally settling on a plumptious pillow of patchouli and guaiac wood.
Languorous warmth and tanned limbs relax for an afternoon at the beach in Encore Un Peu: sparkling rhubarb and fresh sap evoking the glitter of the sea, smoothed by a heart of dry cedar and purple iris, with a subtle, supple leather dry-down. En Terrace is shot through with dappled sunlight, with bright tangerine and grapefruit tempting you to a cocktail, patchouli, cedarwood and gurjum swirling with cypriol, nagarmotha and oudh.
As the daylight slips to sunset, we might make our way to The Grand Hotel with Après Vous: notes of white cedar lapped by coconut milk, smooth sandalwood and an addictive vanilla/amber accord. L’Incitation, meanwhile, seduces with armfuls of seductive rose and an undeniably animalic labdanum that almost seems to purr, on the skin.
Whichever story in scent you choose to trace with Alex Simone, we know you’ll be equally captivated…
