PARFUMS DE MARLY.
DELINA (2017)
Perfumer
Quentin Bisch
Key notes
Lychee · Rhubarb · Damascena Rose · Cashmeran
Surprising note: Nutmeg
I discovered Delina wandering around Covent Garden as a slightly lost student. It was the first perfume that stopped me in my tracks.
A photorealistic lychee, rose and rhubarb creation that's sweet and tart without becoming gourmand. I'm not even going to try to be objective about this fragrance. Yes, it's divisive (the sharpness bothers a lot of people, and I can absolutely appreciate why), and no, it is 1000% NOT a safe blind buy (please don't do that to your wallet), but for me, it's the perfume high that started my obsession, and I've been chasing it ever since.
I now know Delina to be one of the most famous perfumes out there, but at the time, I hadn't even heard of it. It was a real aha moment, and I didn't realise then just how rare those are in the world of perfumery. I could honestly count on one hand the number of times it's happened again in the six years since.
Personally, I think it's the lychee.
As a fruit (is it a fruit? A berry?) lychee/litchi has always been a bit of a fixation for me, and I've got lovely memories of divvying bags of them up with my best friend and giggling over how gruesome they look once peeled. Eyeball, anyone?
Shelled appearance aside, they really are the prettiest things when left intact. I love their rough, blush-pink skins, like fruity lizards. The way they actually taste rosy and perfumed.
I never knew that experience could be captured in a perfume, and I was totally unaware of the hold this fragrance had on the community when I met it.
The Store
I'd like to take a moment to talk about the store itself.
Amongst the walkways of Apple Market (they've since relocated just over to 31 James Street) sat Parfums de Marly. A snapshot into fine perfumery. The manager was attentive but not pushy, a wonderful woman who I still remember to this day.
It was cool when you walked in (I now know this was to protect the fragrances themselves, but it felt like a stylistic choice), and little columns holding bottles formed aisles. My partner got chatting about the men's fragrances while I tried my best to blend in. I'm very shy, and at the time I was even more painfully so.
Thank goodness he did.
Whilst introducing him to the classics like Layton and Herod, the manager sprayed an embossed card with something from a pink bottle, offered it to me, and simply said,
‘Try this’.
I left with a full bottle of Delina (courtesy of my now husband. Thank you, my love.) and one of the most hypnotic fragrance experiences of my life.
I still have that first bottle. It's long empty now, bar a few precious drops that I occasionally revisit for that specific formulation. To be continued...
EXTRAIT NOTES:
Mood
Late Spring in Covent Garden.
Wear when
You want to feel impossible to ignore.
Last thought
Royalty.