Among the crop of new perfumes that have appeared in the past couple of months, these three fragrances stand out for very different reasons. All three offer something compelling, a quality that you might want to seek out when the fragrance market is inundated by about 800 launches a year! 

If at times all you wish for or need is a casual, laid-back scent, then at others–and perhaps at no time better than in the summer–you might want to lay practical reason aside and go for a perfume that can be savored more at leisure for its slightly eccentric and daring facets.

Here they are, in no particular order:

Oriental Flowers by Montale Paris
Perfumer: attributed to Pierre Montale

This is a sumptuous bouquet of heavy-lidded flowers offering a clean resolution in the end. In other words, it mixes business with pleasure, or rather vice-versa.

Oriental Flowers opens as a lush bouquet of flowers and bitter almonds sprinkled with oud and Arabian spices. The atmosphere is Middle Eastern as in a noisy bazaar. At the same time it is a polished and elegant composition suggesting flowers blooming in a bottle of champagne set on a table covered with a white tablecloth and sterling silverware; then the concoction is sipped by a lady sitting at it, clad in warm furs.

The overall effect is narcotic, even hypnotic, evoking at first a thousand-and-one-nights garden in the summer with a nightingale singing in the dark. But the ending is simple and clean like a day at the beach and the scent of warm sun-kissed skin.

Notes: rose, bergamot, ylang-ylang, iris root and jasmine, Balsam of Peru

Available at Luckyscent.com for $95 (50ml) and $135 (100ml). 
Sample it at Luckyscent.com for $3 or through the sampling program at Aedes de Venustas.

Un Zéphir de Rose (Rose Zephyr) by Les Parfums de Rosine Perfumer: François Robert with artistic director Marie-Hélène Rogeon

A rose soliflore as precious as a boudoir lined with glacé satin and as unique as a good wine vintage. It is a limited-edition fragrance from the specialist of rose perfumes, Paris-based niche perfume house Les Parfums de Rosine, which relies for main effect on an exceptional Bulgarian rose harvest.

Its personality is that of a classic composition dedicated to singing the natural beauty of the rose, which might sway even non-lovers of rose compositions.

The perfume starts cool and green then becomes silvery metallic before warming up and blushing in all the appropriate pink tones. Refined and delicate sensations guaranteed.

Notes: anise, basil, rose, Bulgarian rose essence, Damas rose, ambrette

Available at Les-Parfums-de-Rosine.com for 73 € (50ml) and 95 € (100ml). 
They also offer a sampling program of all the house’s perfumes for 15 €

Un Jardin Après La Mousson (A Garden After The Monsoon) by Hermès
Perfumer: Jean-Claude Ellena

Milky fresh opalescent waters colored in pale jade and Celadon. It is the scent of a summery green melon quivering on the threshold of vaguer aquatic impressions of fruits and vegetables such as partly formed buttery and cool watermelon and cucumber. A wisp of leather makes it stranger still and more beautiful.

Despite its originality, or rather thanks to it, it has become one of the three top-sellers of the house of Hermès since its launch in May 2008.

Notes: cardamom, coriander, pepper, Kahili ginger, ginger, vetiver accord.
 

Available at Imaginationperfumery.com for $54.99 (1.6oz) and $71.99 (3.3oz).