Cafe Blanc by Isaac Maimon

 

 

Bread has four ingredients: flour, yeast, water, and salt. From those four ingredients bakers have created a wonderfully diverse group of bread that is distinctly different and tasty. Just think of the difference between a croissant, a baguette, and a bagel. Different density, textures, and tastes in all three examples but yet the same four ingredients. What a talented baker does with a small number of ingredients is very similar to what Hilde Soliani does when she creates perfumes. Sig.ra Soliani does not use the same ingredients every time but she almost always only uses three main ingredients. What she is able to coax from those three ingredients often amazes me because her fragrances are never just about the three ingredients but the spaces where they co-exist which create something special and clearly require a deeper understanding of how your raw materials will interact.

Sig.ra Soliani states this in her own words:  "I have my own very different way to create fragrances….few raw materials which allow me to create masterpieces……few notes which create a Hilde World." 

 

 

 

Sig.ra Soliani’s latest creation Conaffetto is another example of her skill at coaxing the unexpected out of three notes. Conaffetto was created for the wedding day of a close friend of Sig.ra Soliani. According to a story on fragrantica.com it is a play on words expressing two closely related things from Italian wedding days. The phrase Con Affetto (with affection) and the sugar almond candies confetti or as we know them in the US, Jordan Almonds. Those ingredients in confetti candy are two of the three ingredients Sig.ra Soliani uses in Conaffetto. The third ingredient is that brightest of white flowers, orange blossom. This seems perfect for a wedding day fragrance.

 

 

Lately it seems like I have encountered a number of sweet fragrances and for whatever the reason my appreciation is rising on this class of fragrance. Conaffetto is one of the fragrances that has turned my appreciation around in this regard. Often sweet in a fragrance is done with an overload of vanilla but the current crop of sweet fragrances seem to be eschewing vanilla in favor of a more sugary kind of sweet and I am finding this kind of sweet to be less cloying and carry more subtlety.

The sweet aspect of Conaffetto is the common thread throughout its development. While identifiably sweet the sugar accord also contains a bit of the greenness I associate with sugar cane when it is crushed. There is a hint of green and a hint of raw woodiness lurking off in the distance. The almond then arrives and the almost complete nuttiness of that note overwhelms the sweet before the sugar begins to coat it and tone down the bolder aspects of almond. The orange blossom really adds to the depth of Conaffetto with the slightly sweet and slightly indolic nature of that ingredient. It is like walking under a wedding arch laced with orange blossom and catching a noseful of the scent of the flowers; while chewing on a confetti candy.

 

 

Conaffetto is a perfume oil and for an oil it has excellent longevity, almost 36 hours on my skin, and modest sillage although my barista the next morning detected it and asked me what I was wearing so perhaps it has more sillage than I think.

Once again I am impressed with what Sig.ra Soliani has composed from three simple ingredients and like the best bakers who take four simple ingredients and create bread of all kinds. Sig.ra Soliani can take three notes and create memories, which is what any woman’s wedding day should be full of.

Disclosure: This review was based on a sample provided by Hilde Soliani.

P.S.: Along with my Conaffetto sample Sig.ra Soliani also sent me a preview sample of her new fragrance for men, Classe, to be released in September of 2011. Gentlemen I can’t wait to tell you all about this, it is something quite special. Hilde World now has a men's section. 

Hilde Soliani has kindly offered a 10mL roll-on of Conaffetto to one commenter. So tell us your favorite Hilde Soliani fragrance, what fragrance you wore on your wedding day, or what your favorite kind of bread is. The draw ends Saturday Feb 26.

–Mark Behnke, Managing Editor