Creed Acqua Fiorentina

Today is a beautiful, light-filled winter day, but the past three days were monotonously drab as, is often the case in mid-January in Pennsylvania, a dinghy blanket of gray clouds mantled the cold earth. “It is pickled-lime weather,” I muttered to myself as I rooted through my perfume samples pile, trying to find something that would reawaken my dulled senses. I did not want something ambery or smoky or cozy, much as I embrace those kinds of fragrances at the start of the season, when the refreshingly icy Canada air makes its first bold dips into our state and puts me into a romantic swoon that has me pronouncing “Oh my, it’s fruitcake weather!” at every turn. That famous line, from Truman Capote’s wistful story A Christmas Memory, is preceded by the story’s opening sentences: “Imagine a morning in late November. A coming of winter morning more than twenty years ago”—which not only sets the nostalgic tone of the story, but lends it its ring of truth and immediate sense of connection. Enthusiasms and romantic notions are easily and naturally borne on a coming-of-winter morning. It’s on a middle-of-winter morning that they languish.

On a particularly dreary middle-of-winter morning like the one we had yesterday, I take a cue from another literary classic—Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women—and, recalling one of my favorite chapters from this childhood book, I search for the perfume equivalent of pickled limes*. Not that I’ve ever had a pickled lime, mind you, and not that I’m searching for a perfume that smells like limes (though come to think of it, I would dearly love to have a good lime fragrance in my collection). What I’m looking for is something that has any kind of bite to it—something that is unusual for me to wear (which eliminates my go-to floral and chypre scents) and thus has the potential to jolt me out of my doldrums. My sample of Creed Acqua Fiorentina fits the bill; last summer, when the weather was unusually gray and rainy, I turned to it and was shocked out of a period of fragrance ennui by my very reaction to it. It smells childishly fruity in its first fifteen minutes of wear—the thing most serious perfumistas dread—which makes it shockingly perfect on days when being a serious perfumista seems like the dullest thing in the world.

Acqua Fiorentina has notes of greengage plum (often used in cuisine as a dessert plum), plum, rose, carnation, bergamot, Calabrian lemon, Virginia cedar and Indian sandalwood. According to the Creed website, it takes its inspiration from the orchards and gardens of 15^th century Florence, Italy—and the company classifies it as a fruity floral. However, other than a gentle flourish of rose, the florals aren’t very conspicuous in this fragrance, and you can almost divide Acqua Fiorentina up into three stages. The first stage is a deliciously tart and juicy amalgam of fruit: at the very top, it smells like a pink grapefruit, soon giving way to a peach-plum-watermelon infusion that has a certain sparkle and giddiness to it. There is a diaphanous quality to the fragrance, such that even if you think you hate fruity fragrances, I would urge you to give it a try: these fruits are cheeky and tart, but with a thin-skinned transparency that makes them easy to wear. To experience the first stage of this fragrance in the dead of winter is rather delightful: like biting into what you think is going to be a grocery-store plum with no flavor and instead getting a taste of something that bites you back, that awakens your taste buds and reminds you of what fruit is, after you’d forgotten for so long.

In its second stage, the plum comes to the fore, dismissing former associations to other fruits, and the fragrance starts to smooth out. Cedarwood becomes evident, but only in the way that it seems to accentuate the plum, imparting a dryness that deepens the note and gives it a light touch of sherried sweetness. At this point, and at every stage of the fragrance’s wear, Acqua Fiorentina maintains a gossamer quality: this combination of plum and cedar has presence but is not at all weighty. It provides a long and gentle segue into the third stage of the fragrance—the far drydown in which sandalwood emerges and the fragrance becomes a silken remembrance of fruit more than anything else...not unlike the remainder of a creamy meringue on which a mélange of plums and other sherbet-like fruits once rested and have now left their colorful stain. ~

*Pickled limes were the favored treat of Amy, youngest of the March sisters in Louisa May Alcott's book Little Women. In Chapter 7, titled “Amy’s Valley of Humiliation,” she sadly confides to her older sister Meg that she owes pickled limes to a dozen of her schoolmates. “Are limes the fashion now?” her sister asks, to which Amy replies:

“Why, you see, the girls are always buying them, and unless you want to be thought mean, you must do it too. It's nothing but limes now, for everyone is sucking them in their desks in school-time, and trading them off for pencils, bead-rings, paper dolls, or something else at recess. If one girl likes another she gives her a lime; if she's mad with her she eats one before her face, and don't offer even a suck. They treat by turns; and I've had ever so many, but haven't returned them; and I ought, for they are debts of honour, you know.”

“How much will pay them off, and restore your credit?” asked Meg, taking out her purse.

“A quarter would more than do it, and leave a few cents over for a treat for you. Don't you like limes?”

“Not much; you may have my share. Here's the money. Make it last as long as you can, for it isn't very plenty, you know.”

“Oh, thank you! It must be so nice to have pocket-money! I'll have a grand feast, for I haven't tasted a lime this week. I felt delicate about taking any, as I couldn't return them, and I'm actually suffering for one.”

Next day Amy was rather late at school; but could not resist the temptation of displaying, with pardonable pride, a moist, brown-paper parcel, before she consigned it to the inmost recesses of her desk. During the next few minutes the rumour that Amy March had got twenty-four delicious limes (she ate one on the way), and was going to treat, circulated through her `set', and the attentions of her friends became quite overwhelming. Katy Brown invited her to her next party on the spot; Mary Kingsley insisted on lending her her watch till recess; and Jenny Snow, a satirical young lady, who had basely twitted Amy upon her limeless state, promptly buried the hatchet, and offered to furnish answers to certain appalling sums. But Amy had not forgotten Miss Snow's cutting remarks about `some persons whose noses were not too flat to smell other people's limes, and stuck-up people who were not too proud to ask for them'; and she instantly crushed that `Snow girl's' hopes by the withering telegram, “You needn't be so polite all of a sudden, for you won't get any.”

Creed Acqua Fiorentina eau de parfum can be purchased online from the Creed website, as well as from Neiman Marcus, Bergdorf Goodman and LuckyScent.com: 30-ml for $130, or 75-ml for $230. My sample was given to me from a fellow perfumista.

Bottle image is from the CreedBoutique.com.

Posted by Suzanne Keller, 1/21/2010.

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