Fleurs d’Oranger from Serge Lutens is everything lush and lovely and radiant about a little bottle of orange blossom water, right up until the time I add it to a cold drink or a confection, thinking how exquisite it will taste and then realizing, uggghh... this literally tastes like a mouthful of perfume. Fleurs d’Oranger is the extreme version of that ill-fated swallow, all syrupy narcotic, summer damp, fleshy-musked florals, balmy honeyed jasmine, and tuberose, intensified by cumin’s bitter, polarizing pungency.I adore the scent of orange blossoms and enjoy this interpretation more than most. It’s heady and heavy-lidded and hypnotic whereas many others have a lighter, somewhat “clean” aura. I’m fairly certain that the deliciously cunning and charismatic Lady Sylvia Marsh, immortal priestess to an ancient snake god in Ken Russell’s trippy 1988 horror film the Lair of the White Worm, wears this exact scent and as she goes about her days, heartily seducing and eating men, looking fabulous, and enjoying herself tremendously.
Not to my taste at all. I got a sample and to be honest I never even looked at the name as I wanted to test myself on the notes...not much of a test I can tell you. First thing that struck me, orange blossom....white blossomy waxy tuberose, sweet jasmine and in a onslaught of white floral. If you love that then you're in luck because it's here in abundance and I think the combination is good because it keeps the sweetness from becoming too much. However, to me it's quite soapy like Neroli/tuberose or other white florals and although the orange blossom is prominent it's too feminine for me and there's nothing else really to discover after the opening. Longevity and projection are insanely good on this I found spraying a small amount on my pulse points and it was unrelenting.
