Welcome to the perfume room. My scent of the day today comes in the form of a fragrant apology. It is a scent that I initially overlooked, and that scent is Dipteek's Fleur-de-Poe,

created by the late and legendary Olivier Poucher. Now, when the scent first came out in 2018, I unfairly dismissed it. I took one glance at the pyramid, I sprayed it on blotter, and I was like, all right, I know what this is. This is a market response to Glossier U. Dip Teague is putting their hat in the peppery iris musk, and you know what, it is a peppery iris musk. And it might even have actually been Dipteek's response to Glossier U. That I do not know. But for me to have come to that cursory take and never look back, that is where I was wrong, and I am sorry. because Fleur de Poe is nuanced and complex and layered with richness, texture, and so many subtleties that one spray on a blotter will never reveal.

Fleur de Po, with the French word for skin, in its name, must be experienced and examined on skin.

And I am so glad that as I was curating the sample pack for July smell club, something

made me reconsider fleur-de-poe and ultimately include it. So let me share some of those

subtleties that I had initially missed. It opens with a powdery but subtly ambery iris that

feels chalky and neko-like in texture, but then just the faintest bit dirty. And I mean faint. A few minutes in,

the aldehyde start to bloom, giving that slightly bubble bathy, but also sort of endolic

smell that you might know in Chanel number five. To be clear, this Chanel number five element

feels like one string, one chord on an otherwise giant harp that is Fle-poe. It simultaneously feels cloud-like, but also

grounded and sweaty even. It's ethereal but human. And there's this ambrette note that creates a sort

of dirty but clean feel, like a splash of cumin in a glass of milk. There's this sort of puckery

mouth feel, like if you accidentally got powdered deodorant too close to your mouth.

And as I say this out loud, I too am questioning why I know this feeling so damn well.

And yet, I do.

The spice of the carrot note starts to come out, not like boiled carrots, nothing sulfuric or weird.

That's sort of like starchy, but piquant, spicy feel of fresh carrots. Now, I feel like I've overused cherub as a descriptor

recently. I guess I'm in my cherub era, but I can say with certainty that this is the cherub

scent of all cherub scents. It feels like the smell of that very famous Bougarau painting,

Le Mour Reisiquet, Enfant, and you know what? It is. It's a painting you all have seen

somewhere. It's that very famous painting of two little cherubs hugging. And it was the first

visual that popped in my mind. So I googled two little cherubs hugging painting to find out

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