LE MONDE GOURMAND Pétale Éphémère Eau De Parfum

Most Helpful Positive Review

Marshmallows in a sunny rose spring garden

In short this is a gourmand rose, eventually it projects like a warmer, jammy, less green BBW's Rose on me mixed with Cotton Candy Clouds, like a much fresher Hot Couture EDT with peach instead of strawberry to accompany the rose. Up close there is more depth to it. The peach pairs well with the ros...e petals which are a floral balsamic veil on the fragrance. The initial blast is a very sweet and balsamic, fluffy bubblegum scent, pink and girly in my mind, nothing obnoxious and which remains throughout, but becomes more like cotton-candy at the drydown. It is the peach and rose petals together giving me the impression of a scent like watermelon the first 30 mins, specifically identical to a sweet watermelon lip balm I had as a kid. There is a unique and beautiful, floral and warm powdery essence to the scent, present in it right away, it must be from the rose paired with the orange blossom making its entrance, offering a subtle citrusy element at first, (I thought there was lemon in it, but it's not truly sour). I wish the effect from the opening notes lasted longer. The orange blossom is not typically a favorite note of mine, but its sunny, slightly salty nature is suitable here. It always adds a happy, sweet solar touch and here it elevates the whole scent to a more ethereal, floral sophisticated fragrance, rather than a childish plain, candy one. The orange blossom is detectable right away, it reminds me of picnics under the sun. It pairs so well with the peach. I could tell there is orange blossom in the notes before I check them, just by how animalic and solar it is on my skin like holding white flowers and the sun smiling at you. The marshmallow gives the whole scent a scrumptious, fluffy quality, like real marshmallow and fluffy pink clouds in my mind and it also adds creaminess to the rose to emulate cooked-in-sugar rose petals. The projection is really good on me for 1.5 hours. The rose brings an innocence and purity to the fragrance, like the light pink walls of my bedroom as a kid with its peach lace curtains, so the light peachy pink color of the juice matches the scent perfectly. The perfume is not linear on me at all, it is more sunny, decadent and happy at first, then it becomes more heady-floral and perfumey over time due to the rose. Without looking at the notes I could tell there is rose in this and the projection after 1 hour is mainly cotton-candy sweet rose, but it retains its freshness (it never becomes pungent jammy rose like Aguilera's Touch of Seduction or Hot Couture Edt). The rose is more prominent after 30 mins, it gives a colder feel to the scent at this point, just like violet does, like a refreshing garden on a spring afternoon with the sun hidden behind a pink cloud. It's when the peach fades a bit, that the rose turns more heady as rose usually is, as in Macaron Rose by Le Monde Gourmand, but not green. To me they are sister perfumes. The orange blossom is also pretty loud on my skin competing with the rose on that marshmallow stage, till the rose wins then the scent fades after 2.5-3 hrs. I am not crazy about the heady rose petals dominance after an hour of wear since rose always makes me slightly dizzy, even though some of this rose-jam sweetness is always present so it never becomes a screechy, mature green rose so that's a bonus (I already have BBW's Rose for that vibe). After 1 hour, I still detect some of the playful sweet gourmand notes and the salty orange blossom when smelling my skin up close. The scent is ephemeral indeed, about 2-3 hours (Greek word for short-lived - I am Greek so Petale Ephemere sounds weird to me as both words are unchanged Greek in a French/Latin form for 'fleeting petal'), but that's okay with me cuz spraying it again freshens the peachy-rose-orange-blossom bubblegum, powdery sweetness that is so dreamy. Rose petals here is anything but fleeting, it's the one that stays strong on my skin till the end. Also we perceive perfume differently, and to me this is not like D&G Devotion, but due to their jammy sweet nature and balsamic sweetness they could be in the same gourmand floral family. Both are balsamic, but no heady rose or romantic, pink vibe in Devotion, and no intensely sour, "drunk", sugary lemon-lime scent here. Devotion is sugary sour, like lime on me without smelling like bubblegum or fluffy like marshmallow, nothing pink and ethereal, but rather rich and syrupy, with the rum's bad attitude. Devotion is lemon-based. Petale Ephemere is rose-centered, fresher, delicate, yet sweet like having pink marshmallows in a rose garden and as I said the rose becomes a bit heady and intense on me. Devotion is balsamic in a different way, it is balsamic in a boozy and creamy-dessert manner with the rum-panacotta, while it opens up smelling rich, floral and perfumey like The One to me (could be a The One flanker), then dries down to a less perfumey scent far from the floral-peach/bergamot ambery essence of The One, morphing into a less serious lemon/lime-vanilla scent. Devotion becomes a total gourmand on my skin, like a bakery-scented body mist, and its lemon smells slightly off on me which I am not crazy about. Both scents are nice, but different. No syrupy lime-sour notes in Petale Ephemere, just the solar sweet beauty of orange blossom and that's the only note in common, but in Devotion orange blossom is more subtle on my skin surrounded by a different vibe of notes.