Last Updated on July 19, 2022
I. PROLOGUE
My family is crazy about fragrances, they're our souvenirs of sorts because when we travel, we always end up bringing home a new perfume, whether we planned it or not (you can barely get non-mainstream fragrance lines in Slovenia, even Hermès is tough call. Luckily Trieste and the wonderful Essenze shop that's bound to satisfy the finest of appetites are only an hour away by car).
Last weekend we were on a mission to find the Santa Maria Novella boutique near Palazzo Grassi in Venice. You can never be too sure you'll find what you're looking for in Venice because addresses and numbers don't mean or help much there, so such escapades are actually all about getting lost in shady little alleys and maybe finding something you like even better than what you were supposed to find ... It's very rewarding when the building suddenly materializes before you (or vice versa) after the long time you've spent walking, and clearly we were of luck that Sunday because at one point the Santa Maria Novella boutique appeared right in front of us.
II. (HI)STORY
Santa Maria Novella is one of the world's oldest pharmacies. It was established in Florence in 1612. Many of their products - ranging from candles and room sprays to fragrances and creams - are based on hundreds of years old recipes. Each bottle of SMN fragrances is numbered and upon purchase you get a certificate that you can fax to SMN Florence headquarters where they'll write your name down in their golden book (edit: mom corrected me this only applies if you buy Ottone or Porcellana, the two fragrances released for Santa Maria Novella's 400th anniversary). The golden book, the history, the package design and most of all, the smells themselves, it all has this luxurious old world charm I cannot be impervious to even though I myself live in the old world. My mom chose a cologne called Porcellana and has labeled me "perfume thief" in advance as I was very sincere and blatantly obvious about the fact that I plan to wear it too (I'm actually wearing it right now), breaking my longstanding self-imposed rule about never wearing the same fragrance as someone I see more or less every day (which has spared me from wearing many lovely scents, so maybe it's not that much of a good rule after all?) Porcellana is light and romantic, I usually go for more complex and unusual fragrances, yet this one works because it's simple, but not really.
Now that I think about it, most of all the fragrance evokes Florence, though my memory of it is sparse, so in my head Porcellana might be inventing a whole new world.
Za Hermes v Sloveniji najboljsi duty free na letaliscu (in ce si sprintas elektronski boarding pass dobis se 10 % popusta)
drugace imajo v limoni nekaj malega, vcasih se je dobil v Ypsilonu, ki pa ga zdaj vec ni
tudi jaz prisegam na Hermes (zacela sem z Eau d'Orange verte, ko sem jo enkrat dobila v mini semplu na Air France letalu in potem Kelly Caleche, pa Eud de Pamplemousse rose, in 24, rue fauburg, in zdaj Voyage) zdi se mi, da pri Hermes vse super disi, pri drugih zna biti bolj hit and miss
mi je pa v spominu ostala tudi Guerlain trgovina v Le Marais, kjer imajo toliko enih esenc, da se ti kar zmesa
ne smes pa it tja, ce si nagnjen k migrenam in slabostim, ker je kar too much vonjav
V Limoniju in Müllerju jih včasih imajo, včasih pa ne, in tester od Un Jardin en Méditerranée je v Müllerju že celo večnost prazen. V soboto sem bila v Benetkah prvič v Hermèsovi trgovini prav zaradi parfumov, ker sem se spomnila, da bodo tam najbrž imeli vse - raj!
In veš, da so tvoji parfumi tudi moji? :) Samo do Voyage še nisem prišla. Edini Hermèsov, ki na meni ne diši dobro, je pa prav Un Jardin en Méditerranée, za katerega sem seveda mislila, da mi bo tako super, da ga bom takoj kupila.
Ko sem bila nazadnje v Parizu, sem šla mimo Guerlainovega butika na Elizejskih poljanah. Nisem imela časa, da bi šla noter, bo pa ostal za naslednjič. Za butik v Le Marais pa nisem vedela, hvala. Se bom spopadla z vonjavami. :)
meni tudi mediteranee ni, mi je pa jardin sur le nil super (afrika pac) ampak ko sem eno steklenicko kupila si nisem se ene, zaenkrat sem si samo eau d'orange verte ze dvakrat kupila, car hermesovih parfumov je tudi, da dolgo drzijo, vsaj meni se zdi, ne rabis se ful naspricat