dyptique’s dangerous sleeping beauty

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File:Henry Meynell Rheam - Sleeping Beauty.jpgin the darker, more atavistic versions of Sleeping Beauty, the dormant castle is surrounded by an impenetrable wall of rose briars, with gigantic thorns that impale the hapless princes who try to push through to the interior in which the lovely princess lies in her enchanted coma.

The princes’ bodies hang on that monstrous rose hedge, decomposing until they are naught but skeletons. This image haunted me when I was young, as it still does now, being one of the most disturbing of a a whole series of folktales which emphasize not only the rose’s beauty, but also its danger—for below the smooth silk-plush blossoms, like spikes and thorns, jagged leaves, and pain. This is one of the reasons I believe the rose makes such a perfect symbol for love—a thing of great beauty as well as undeniable pain. File:Labelle4.jpg

Dyptique’s l’ombre dans l’eau captures this dark green danger of the rose, I believe. It is not as menacing as a wall of gigantic malignant thorns, but it does explore the stems and leaves and vegetation lurking around the rosebud as much as the flower itself-the shadows and dampnesses, not the brilliances and . The addition of craggy and sharp blackcurrant leaves pushes it even further into Grimm territory.

I find that it opens very green and damp, then becomes somewhat fruity, all the while supporting the blowsy weight of a wet, bright Damask rose—

Somehow the combination of that intense rose and the intense greenness of the foliage surrounding it makes me think of this fragrance as a living rose spliced on top of Vent Vert…..

I am loving this today.

CREDITS:

Henry Maynell Rheam’s sleeping beauty courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

thorn image from http://sensitivesaladventures.blogspot.com/

llustrationfrom Histoires ou Contes du Temps passé: Les Contes de ma Mère l'Oye(1697). Gustave Doré's illustrations for Charles Perrault's La Belle au Bois Dormant. Courtesy of http://www.ac-amiens.fr/pedagogie/lettres/lycee/perrault/gravures.htm

 

Comments

  1. CarolAugust 5, 2010 at 3:41 PM

    This is one of my top two fragrances at the moment!!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. VanessaAugust 5, 2010 at 4:19 PM

    I do agree about this scent capturing the "dark green danger" of the rose, and your point about the rose being a symbol of the bittersweet nature of love!

    ReplyDelete
  3. La Bonne VivanteAugust 5, 2010 at 5:02 PM

    Oh BF! Me too. Well, maybe not in the top two, but up there....

    FS, thanks for agreeing with me (giggles.)

    ReplyDelete
  4. indieperfumesAugust 6, 2010 at 10:24 AM

    Now I want to try this, I would love to find a scent that captured the Grimm story. Dark and beautiful and hopeful and dangerous at the same time, as is love, as you say...

    ReplyDelete
  5. AnonymousAugust 6, 2010 at 11:38 AM

    Oh, those old fairy tales... brutal and lovely all wrapped up together. (Wonder what happened to my mother's old fairy tale book? I think my kids have only read the modern cleaned-up versions, and it's such a shame. I'd bet not even the library has an old collection.)

    I just wore LOdlE - isn't that a beautiful name? - for the first time a few days ago. It's pretty, very pretty in fact. I admit, though, that no green+rose scent in my sniffing has gotten anywhere near the sadly-discontinued L'Arte di Gucci for "dangerous beauty." Ah, well - you love what you love. I'll take L'Arte, someone else will take Knowing, and you and BF can take L'Ombre...

    ReplyDelete
  6. UnknownAugust 6, 2010 at 1:33 PM

    I love it! It was one of those perfumes that I tried as a sample and I wanted to own it immediately! It took me a week before I could find the time to go get it and I was mad for it the whole time. You describe it exactly as I experience it too: wet, green, earthy and heavy roses. I wore it in rainy June and it was perfect.

    ReplyDelete
  7. ScentScelfAugust 6, 2010 at 2:06 PM

    Beautiful. Review and painting. (Sleeping Beauty in blues? Love it.)

    I think I have a sample of this that I've been hoarding, waiting for a "moment" to try it out. Once I am done with this Forreau Noir on one arm/Iris Noir on the other amusement, I might go to that. Or wait a day. But going, I am.

    Remember what happens to -- who was it, the step sisters in the original Cinderella? Dragged in a barrel of nails, a punishment of their own description? Or was it Snow White's stepmother?

    ReplyDelete
  8. willAugust 7, 2010 at 8:15 PM

    The symbolic nature of the rose ... I suggest it's pain/beauty imagery better represents Life than just love.

    ReplyDelete

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