La Victoire de Samothrace
The “La Victoire de Samothrace” is an eloquent homage to Hellenistic culture. At the four cardinal points, setting the perfume towards the most magnificent olfactory destination, a quartet of jasmine, orange blossom, rose and magnolia brings floral vigour, a whiff from the sunny coasts. Jasmine flower, soft and atypical, disseminates its majesty around a village, Grasse, renowned for its perfume tradition and the quality of its enfleurage. Orange blossom, with its powdery, green scent, blows a soft wind from the Arabian Sea and catches the senses in a swirl of irresistible notes. It is easy to understand why this flower was Louis XIV’s favourite, the only he could stand around Versailles. Orange blossom sparked a craze: the Hall of Mirrors was adorned with bowls filled with bitter oranges, the Château’s Orangerie offered its fruits to the royal distillery.
Known since time immemorial, myrrh has a mystical, almost curative power. It was much sought after in Ancient Greece and Rome. It’s the myrrh of the Magi: Balthazar, upon Jesus’s birth, brought the precious resin, with its balsam, woody, enthralling scent, at the newborn’s feet.
Queen of gardens and air, the rose comes from Syria and was praised by Emperor Nero, who had his guests’ tables adorned with the princely flower and its musky, clove-like scent. It is paired here with majestic magnolia flower. In the 18th century, physician and botanist François Bonamy identified the glorious tree and its delicately green-scented, mysterious, ephemeral flower as Magnolia Grandiflora.