« Serge Lutens L'Orpheline (2014) - On Motherly Love In Absentia & Anger {Perfume Review & Musings} | Home | Diana Vreeland Perfumes - Immoderate Parfums (2014) {New Fragrances} »

By Chant Wagner

Nuxe Body Relaxing Fragrant Water - Skin in the City (2014) {Perfume Review}

Nuxe_Eau_Delassante_Relaxing.jpg

French beauty brand Nuxe have been turning to their beauty products for perfume inspiration as others before them. After Prodigieux le Parfum in 2012 inspired by their cult beauty product L'Huile Prodigieuse, they are now proposing a wellness scent inspired by "the delicacy of a caress" and their Body range called Relaxing Fragrant Water, or again in French Eau Délassante Parfumante...

The brand claims that the effect of this fragrant water is "immediate". Its notes are coconut sorbet, orange blossom, almond blossom, wild vanilla, and powdery musk. 

The main obvious qualities of this fragrance are that it is very easy to wear, with a versatile and pleasing brand of sensuality. For musk lovers, it offers what I like to call a "closet musk oil" effect, meaning that it operates like a musk oil, albeit in disguise yet with a sensuality which is just as present and central to its olfactory mission. Somehow, there is this thickness of the musk oil lingering among the light, volatile notes. 

Another aspect you experience with this Relaxing Fragrant Water is the olfactory feedback you get from different angles - and they all smell good. It smells clean and powdery like a great soap at one time, at another time, you catch a whiff of headshoppy sandalwood, in a very good way. The musk note saves this scent from the banality of yet another coconut-white floral summer edition copied from Bronze Goddess. It's got something insistent and a bit impolite to say, which makes it stand out. 

As to gauging how truly relaxing the effect of the perfume is, it's more complicated a claim to verify. I could only state that I did not feel anxious while wearing it and that it did not make me lose my equanimity. I did not start yawning either as pure orange blossom is wont to make me react to it usually. This Eau Délassante is well balanced and agreeable a concoction. 
 
Perhaps its greatest virtue is the manner in which it puts you back in touch with the scent of your own skin. In the middle of a city which sometimes stinks and sometimes smells like heaven but rarely helps you feel more in tune with the simple, magnified sensation of your warm, supple skin, this works as a humanizing and idealizing scent à la Grenouille. Yes, your skin is there, enhanced by this scent which is more subtle than that of tanning lotion. So perhaps you could say that this eau is able to make you feel well in your skin by making you experience what a beautiful thing fragrant, alive, hot skin is.  

Related Posts

Leave a Comment