Let us enjoy this excerpt from Pablo Neruda’s Ode To The Lemon:

…he most intense liqueur
of nature,
unique, vivid,
concentrated,
born of the cool, fresh
lemon,
of its fragrant house,
its acid, secret symmetry.

I bet you already can smell lemon. You can feel your mouth water just a bit, thinking of the tart sour taste of fresh lemonade, and the ability of the scent and taste of lemon to clear away the day, and too clear your sense of taste and smell. It is hard to capture lemons in perfume without it smelling like a lemon home cleaner or detergent. If you try to sweeten it, you get a lemon cupcake scent which is nice, but not just “lemons”. The scent of the lemon is simple and perfect. To be able to capture it requires a delicate balance of Other Notes – like florals, greens and some woods. The type of balance one finds in lovely classic colognes. But with more lemon. If you really wanted to up the ante in the tradition of classic lemon colognes like Eau de Rochas, O de Lancome and Dior Diorella, you add oakmoss and make it earthy and sexy.

Mary Greenwell’s Lemon is like all of these beauties combined and wrapped up in a magical cloak of modern, yellow, lemony goodness. This is not a classic lemon perfume, but it kind of fools you into thinking it is. That HAS to be the oakmoss, but it advances, acts all sexy and earthy, and it retreats and hides behind the soft floral heart and airy, clean woodsy base. The flowers are very quiet with maybe a touch of jasmine or lily of the valley peeking out, and the woodsy base is clean almost in the way of an Egyptian Musk. Its a contemplative wood – maybe cedar, sandalwood and a touch of amber? Anyways, all of the Other Notes only serve to deliver the yummiest most mouth watering and fresh – in a sexy way. Does that make sense? The bottle weighs a ton, and has a gold plated dome cap on it that sort of reminds me of Courreges or Cardin somehow. It has a retro 70s vibe, but that might just be my association with the lemon scents of my youth – Love’s Fresh Lemon, Revlon Wild Lemon and the one with the lemon cap, I can’t recall the name.

Mary Greenwell is a legendary makeup from the UK. With a client list ranging from Vogue to Victoria Beckham, Cate Blanchett and the late Princess of Wales, her name is synonymous with Bobbi Brown in the cosmetic world. Creating perfume was a natural step for her – just finishing the process. After the make up, apply a beautiful perfume! Lemon is her second perfume, and her first one Plum, was a massive success and is loved by many. I still haven’t tried Plum! Not sure why that is, but now that I see what she has done with one fruit as the highlight of a perfume, I now realize I simply must try Plum. I am seriously in love with Lemon and plan to get a lot of wear out of it this summer. If you like the idea of a lemon perfume, you need this. It wears close to the skin and is never loud or brash, and lasts a few hours on the skin. Just when I think it’s all disappeared, a gentle waft of woodsy lemony prettiness comes out of nowhere.

Mary Greenwell’s perfumes are available on her UK website or on Parfum1. Prices start at $40 for a gorgeous travel spray, to $150 for a 100ml bottle. You can buy samples as well, which is an awesome thing for a pefume company to do, don’t you think?