By Kilian Love & Tears, Surrender (2010): A Jasmine Soliflore to be Remembered {Perfume Review}

The Surrender, Alexis Kersey, oil on canvas

Here is the short form of a longer review I wanted to write about the jasmine soliflore composition that By Kilian launched last year, Love and Tears, Surrender. I have not re-smelled the perfume since then, that is, last summer. Please consider it a snapshot in time.

It opens on a powerful yet soft scent of jasmine. It is beautifully animalic, like a sleek panther moving among a field of jasmine. There is the contrast of the animal in it with the floral but the wild, savage part is dressed in very elegant garbs. A nuance of green makes the perfume feel a bit crunchy-green. It is just a beautiful fireworks explosion of jasmine sweetened by honey. As the scent progresses, it deepens further, both sharp and round. Very quickly one has to acknowledge that this is one of the most beauteous jasmine compositions of the day, a reenactment in some ways of the Joy challenge: to be extremely qualitative rather than artful...

But like a motor which continues to roar and purr this jasmine is, like its rose counterpart, Rose Oud, full of life and buoyancy, richness and freshness.

A  discrete almond note adds a light oriental touch. The citruses make the scent feel even more solar. A rose note adds floral body to the composition.

While the perfume is high-power, it is not brassy nor overpowering as the perfumer has managed to both unleash and keep on leash the jasmine which seems ready to light a bulb thanks to its raw energy.

Love and Tears, Surrender is a beautiful solar explosion of jasmine. The inescapable simplicity of its beauty makes me use the same words again and again: "beautiful, explosion, animal, jasmine, solar."

Further along, while the perfume seemed to have given all its might and personality, it now reveals a more brutal animal note seething with fecal indoles. The dress of the animal has been discarded. Now predominate the base smells of luxuriance. The more coital scent of jasmines are exhaling without any control anymore.

But while someone might have been tempted to end the fragrance on a note of damnation, a gentle note of white vanilla with meringue nuances tames the scent.

For more background information, you can read the announcement for the scent