Jacques Guerlain walking down the Seine at evening dawn. I felt something so intense, I could only express it in a perfume. Maybe the first floriental: preempting the classic oriental chord of orris, vanilla and rose. Catherine Deneuve's signature.

Hardly a top note: what matters is that a woman arrives smelling good at her destination. It's florals on a base of vanilla. Heliotrope most prominent (baby powder smell); complicated scent; orange blossom, vanilla, iris and incense. Anisseed, carnation, orange blossom; iris, vanilla, musk. To me, it feels frozen, like a flower behind glass.