Imagine yourself in a Japanese garden – a family garden, surrounded by dozens of delicate trees, grapefruit and hundreds of bushes of gardenias. It's early morning, the day after a thunderstorm. Imagine the drops of the rain on the leaves with the sun breaking through the cloud. The scent of the white gardenia is strong. With the humidity and heat, the scent emanates from the ground.*

That's Camille Goutal of Annick Goutal, explaining the inspiration for the line's latest perfume launch, Un Matin d’Orage. It's a reasonably accurate portrait of what you can expect, I suppose, although to my nose, Un Matin d'Orage is both drier and more transparent than what you'd get from “hundreds of bushes of gardenias” on a hot, humid day — and just as well, as such a thing might knock you out cold.

The opening is heavily ozonic and aquatic, and has a slight mineral aspect; overall, it nicely conveys the sense of “after the storm”. The gardenia and magolia stand out most clearly in the dry down…

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