Von Eusersdorff ‘Classic Mimosa’

I am currently on a journey around the olfactory delights of the Von Eusersdorff Classic collection. I started a few days ago with the effortless sophistication of ‘Classic Patchouli’. Now it is the turn of ‘Classic Mimosa’.

To quickly re-cap, Von Eusersdorff has an impeccable history in the trade of oils, herbs and petals for the perfume industry. The German family name has now been resurrected as a fragrance brand with direct descendant Camille Henfling and his creative team as the genius behind it. The company has since launched five perfumes, ‘Classic patchouli’, ‘Classic Vetiver, ‘Classic Myrrh’ and ‘Classic Mimosa’, then most recently ‘Classic Orange’. In this series of reviews I will be talking about the original four.

After the masterful power of ‘Classic Patchouli’ I was excited to see what Von Eusersdorff would do with mimosa, an airy soft baby of a floral….

‘Classic Mimosa’ opens with a blast of citrus wrapped in the cleanest cotton sheets. I am immediately drawn into an imaginary morning in a house by the sea, the sun shining and little clouds scooting happily across the pale blue sky. The tide is out, the sand is pristine and in the garden the line is strung with the morning’s clean washing.

White sheets, white sand, blue sky, green sea. In the window stands a porcelain jug filled with palest pink roses and a dish of warm, crisp little madeleines are cooling next to a tall glass of cloudy lemonade….and so on.

I make a snap judgement in those first few seconds and I automatically assume that I know what kind of a perfume this is going to be. It appears to fall very firmly into the ‘clean’ category of scent and I am momentarily disappointed. There are so many mainstream fragrances in this already overcrowded group, in my opinion there is no need for yet another ‘laundry fresh’ clone. However, and I must stress this for anyone else who would judge it so, ‘Classic Mimosa’ is much, much more than ‘just another clean perfume’. I’ll try to explain why.

After the citrusy freshness comes a green, slightly salty note that is very much like the idea of a perfectly clear, aqua coloured sea. The whole fragrance develops in this fairytale manner. It’s like a photograph of a holiday you wish you could take. It is misty lensed and rose tinted. I want to use the term ‘hyper-real’ but that wouldn’t be right, ‘Classic Mimosa’ is more idealistic in it’s representation of each note. The salty marine is perfect blue/green, the citrus is light as air and not in the least bit sticky or sharp. There is a gorgeous floral accord of roses and violet that smells exactly like a pre-raphaelite painting of roses and violets, if you understand what I mean. The petals seem to drift in and out and all around in a sheer but perfectly detailed performance.

Mimosa comes out to play in the form of clean, dry cotton. Not soapy or laundryesque, just absolutely clean, floating, soft soft fabric. It is enriched with musks and vanilla and these help to add just a little bit of weight -but not too much sweetness- to this feather light fragrance. Yet here again something a little bit dream-like happens. ‘Classic Mimosa’ gives every impression of being super fine and gauzy, but it has a lot of presence and an impressive sillage for a scent of this type. I applied a moderate smear to my wrist, went out and about all day and I can still catch it’s ending melody this evening.

This perfume has been created using the lightest of magic brush strokes, capturing a perfect, scented scene from a wistful daydream. It has a distinctly photoshopped quality to it, which is not to say that it smells overly artificial. The quality of the product is clear and this seems to be the theme running through Von Eusersdorff fragrances. It is about taking something quite simple and doing it very, very well.

As I have said in the past, I do not have an impressive back catalogue of comparisons to draw from, so I wouldn’t like to venture an opinion on whether this is a great mimosa fragrance specifically, but what I can say is that this a truly great fresh/floral fragrance, one of the best I have come across.

Just like ‘Classic Patchouli’, ‘Classic Mimosa’ smells of wealth. This is a perfume to wear at your villa in the south of France while you stand at the balustrade, wrapped in an exquisite Egyptian cotton dressing gown with french lace trim, looking out over the sparkling ocean and sipping a mimosa cocktail for breakfast. It is perfectly crafted and finished, there are no odd tweaks here to surprise you and again it is better for it. This is a highly crafted perfume, sleek, chic and artfully poised. It has the same rounded quality that I found in ‘Classic Patchouli’, and also an impressive restraint. Randomly, and for no scent related reason at all, I am reminded of fine gold jewellery as I wear this perfume. I think it is the timeless high status that gold will always represent, that status which is also at play in this scent.

This could so easily have been a flippant, girly nothing of a fragrance but the refined balance of notes and the considered simplicity take it to another level. I can imagine a lot of women, and men, falling head over heels for ‘Classic Mimosa’ because it has all the fresh, clean linen and sheer floral veils that are so popular, only done with real sophistication. It is not a scent which I personally would chose to wear for myself right now, but I have enjoyed reviewing it greatly. There is no denying that it is a masterfully created perfume.