The opening note of Mona di Orio’s “Vanille” combines oranges, petitgrain, cloves, many more oranges and almonds. It is a very untypical vanilla scent, a bit darker and spicier and fuller and rounder than most. The prickling scent of the petitgrain is unmistakable the whole time, the vanilla more like a warm background for the competition of the sweet fruit of the oranges with the bitter peel, spiced with cloves.
Vanilla features in most of the scents I love and the combinations are endless. With chocolate, with caramel, with milk, with fruits, with woods, with spices etc. The mix with orange or lemon is usually one of the best.
Sweet Sicilian orange with its bitter peel comes to another dimension through adding vanilla. Not the sugary sweet version of vanilla one knows from baking liquids or aromatised vanilla sugar, but the full vanilla bean. The full bean grinded to powder or cooked, opened and scraped out. When one sticks a finger in it and tries it pure, it is not sweet at all.
The overall olfactory experience created by “Vanille” comes very close to candied, slightly bitter orange peel used for Christmas baking in Germany. Next to the usual ingredients in a “Stollen” cake like sugar, flour and butter, it contains a lot of raisins, candied lemon and candied orange peel. The candied orange peel is not used often in the kitchen today, but when I taste it, it brings back memories. Another association I have when smelling Mona di Orio’s “Vanille” is Claudia Roden’s famous orange almond cake. Full oranges are cooked for this cake, peel and all and the pulp then mixed with the grinded almonds, sugar and baking powder. The result is a moist and lush cake with a very peculiar taste, that cannot be traced to any single origin.
The colours of the perfume are warm brown and glowing orange. The overall feeling of the scent is tropical. In the description of the fragrance Mona di Orio writes of thinking of a ship loaded with spices on the way to Madagascar or the Comoros Islands. A romantic image.
I have been in Madagascar a few times. 15 years ago, it was possible to buy Vanilla and spices in the streets from street vendors and in local supermarkets. Now the shelves are empty and no one offers vanilla in the streets. A vanilla mafia must have taken over right at the origin of the plant. I wonder if today normal people have still the chance to cook with it; the prices in the specialized shops that sell vanilla now exclusively are the same like here in Europe in the supermarkets – very expensive. To me it was shocking to see that the people living where a plant is grown in abundance are not able to afford it anymore in just 15 years.
Back to “Vanille” by Mona di Orio. Her company website states the scent notes as follows: Brazilian bitter orange, rum absolute, petitgrain, clove, vanilla from Madagascar, tolu, guaiac wood, vetiver, sandalwood, ylang-ylang, tonka bean, leather, musk and amber.
The petitgrain gives indeed a special twang to the orange and stays to the end. The rum, although well loved by me in perfumes, I cannot much distinguish here. Maybe it blends in seamlessly and gives the overall darker touch to the vanilla in the perfume. The cloves can be clearly singled out. Most of the woods give a warm and luxurious background to the fruit and the vanilla. On the first day the orange is stronger. On the second day, when you sniff a piece of clothing sprayed with the perfume, a melodious smell of clove, petitgrain and vanilla is still lingering there.
Mona di Orio learned her craft in Grasse from master perfumer Edmond Roudniska. She worked for 15 years with him before founding the company that bears her name in 2004, together with Jeroen Oude Sogtoen. Tragically, she died much too early in 2011 with only 42 years. Today her partner continues her work with Fredrik Dalman.
“Vanille” was created by her in 2011, one of her last scents. It is part of the “Les Nombres d’Or” collection which takes the harmony originating from the golden ratio as a guiding principle. The golden ratio is a concept known since ancient times and best known to most from Leonardo da Vincis paintings, the “Divine proportions”. I spare us the maths behind it; whenever the golden ratio is applied a feeling of harmony can be observed by the beholder. It is seen in nature, in buildings, pictures, photographs and in design.
The golden ratio is a fitting description for Mona di Orio’s light-handed combination of sunny and dark scent notes, prickling and soothing ones. I own her scent “Musc” as well and it follows the same principles as “Vanilla”.
This blend of prickling and soothing smells has the unusual effect of making you feel normally soothing notes as stimulation to the nose. Classic scent notes win new facets and get a very different life of their own, far away from mainstream. The overall theme of Mona di Orio’s perfumes seems to be that sweet ingredients do not come out overtly sweet, but better.
I remember being a bit surprised when smelling “Vanilla” for the first time. I ordered it online, based on scent notes only. Surprise gave way to deep and long felt appreciation.