I love the smell of mimosa flowers (Acacia pravissima is blooming in my garden now). For me, the “perfume” that best captures the floral scent most of us associate with “mimosa” (Acacia dealbata) is Diptyque Mimosa room spray. I’ve loved many of the Annick Goutal floral fragrances, and I hoped Le Mimosa would provide a mimosa scent I could wear on my skin, not simply spray into the air.

Le Mimosa, developed by perfumer Isabelle Doyen, lists fragrance notes of peach, anise, iris, mimosa, sandalwood and white musk. Le Mimosa opens with a dry, flat note that smells like a combination of pencil shavings, cumin powder, and ‘hairy’ leather. This slightly “dirty” aroma marches thru the entire composition…only soap will remove it from skin. As Le Mimosa develops, I smell artificial “peach” and I detect, for a split second, a puff of iris, a speck of anise, and some vague “citrus.”

There’s plenty of white musk and the aforementioned “peach” in Le Mimosa’s base, but none of Le Mimosa’s notes produces a scent with the aroma of fresh mimosa blossoms (if that’s what you are looking for or expecting). What mimosa there is in Le Mimosa is faint…

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