Darren Alan Perfumes Jonquille, courtesy of the brand

 A marker of great art is often its ability to capture and transport a person to a specific place and time. Fragrance is especially powerful in its ability to touch memory, as the operational pathways of memory and olfaction are quite close in the brain. Darren Alan Perfumes Jonquille had an extraordinary effect on me. At first spray, this elegant fragrance brought back a lost childhood memory with an immediacy and tenderness that is rare to experience. After confirmation from my mother, I began to wear Darren Alan Perfumes Jonquille to excavate that precious childhood experience and treasure the pure joy and innocence it returned to me.

Mercie Cutting Flowers by Edmund Tarbell common use

The spring air is light and delicately warm with a chill still left in the shadows of the morning. My mother and I are outside our home working the flower beds. The jonquils are the only blooms to come up so far, matching the happy yellow dandelions in the lawn. The soil in the flower beds is rich, silty and loamy with some sandstone residue from the Ouachita mountains. Healthy soil that is full with life has a special scent to it, like geosmin, kind of sweet and a touch of active and hardy decomposition. I must have been around 9 years old on that lazy spring weekend. Darren Alan Perfumes Jonquille brought back the precious memory of the day with my mom. I remember making a necklace from the jonquils, daffodils and dandelions, interweaving their bright green stems by loosening green waters from the stems in tiny slits to fit the next one into the intricate plait. Jonquils and dandelions mixed together in a glorious veil of complex and honeyed floralcy along the lines of hyacinth and jasmine with touches of spice and musk. If you are looking to experience such a joyful and purely contented spring day, laying on the new grass with a yellow floral garland, then Jonquille should be next on your list.

Perfumer Darren Alan courtesy of the perfumer

Darren Alan is an American artisanal perfumer who has made a 7-year deep study of perfumery’s classical genres, including materials often used in classical perfumery. Darren brings these materials into his fragrances with an eye to vitality and modernity. Darren describes his Nouveau Vintage style as a kind of search: “if I were living and creating fragrances back in the Golden Age of Perfumery, what would my fragrances have smelled like back then?” Indeed, his fragrances express the discipline and materials of classic genres in an exuberant and vital form today. When I want to know what my cherished bottles of vintage perfume might have smelled like in their prime, I often look to Darren Alan’s creations for an idea of that elite craftsmanship and disciplined production. Darren also leverages contemporary knowledge and know-how, “it’s not just a matter of recreating fragrances in a vintage style, but also bringing my modern experience to the formula as well. This process gives my fragrances a vintage throwback while still feeling relevant to the modern nose.”

Yellow Jonquil #3 Georgia O’Keefe wiki

Darren Alan Perfumes Jonquille opens with a bright flash of Bergamot shining on the green freshness of Galbanum. The effect of sunny Bergamot on sharp Galbanum produces a lovely effervescent and sparkly opening with a meadow-fresh wildflower floralcy. The heart of Darren Alan’s Jonquille Parfum is a masterful symphony of everything golden and yellow to be found in a spring-time bouquet. The sweet nectar-like aura of Mimosa blends beautifully with Jonquil’s darkly spicy golden scent, its aldehydic sheen merging into femme muskiness. There is a green leafy edge to Jonquil that reaches out and bridges beautifully with rich, green and heady Narcissus.

Into the dry down, Jonquille shows the velvety floral aspects of Jonquil, as well as its powdery texture. Darkly honeyed and still beautifully musky, Angelica Root adds an earthy quality that brings to mind the awakening of life in spring soil. Warm Ambrette Seed softens and warms with a nutty and fatty texture, delicately animalic and hay-like, feeling as if the sun was reanimating the dry earth after winter. Darren Alan Perfumes Jonquille leaves my skin enveloped in a soft, enchanting Musk with stray flashes of yellow petals and green stems floating in a gentle breeze.

Notes: Bergamot, Galbanum, Jonquil, Narcissus, Mimosa, Angelica Root, Ambrette Seed, Vintage Musk Accord

Bottle my own, opinions my own.

~ Rachel K. Ng, Senior Contributor

 

Darren Alan Perfumes Jonquille bottle, courtesy of the brand

Thanks to Darren Alan we have a 50 ml bottle of Jonquille Parfum for a registered ÇaFleureBon reader USA ONLY, (if you are not sure if you are registered click here – you must register on our site or your entry will be invalid). To be eligible please leave a quality comment on this site with what strikes you about Jonquille Draw Closes 12/9/2023

Please enjoy my review of Darren Alan’s vintage style Chypre No 1 here.

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