As the Holidays approach every year it seems a perfume brand wants to release a collection of soliflores meant to be combined. Most of the time I find these collections lacking. They are generally a single accord without really being a perfume that develops over time. Occasionally it seems like the quality control is lacking enough that something with some complexity slips through. Chloe Herba Mimosa seems to be the one for the new Chloe collection.
Herba Mimosa is part of the L’Atelier des Fleurs collection. Nine fragrances designed to be a single accord which you can mix and match. The other ones are exactly what they say on the label; Cedrus, Lavanda, Neroli, Verbena, Rose Damascena, Jasminum Sambac, Magnolia Alba, and Hibiscus Abelmoschus. All eight of those are straight forward representations of what is on the bottle. I was hoping the Hibiscus Abelmoschus might stand out. Instead it was the one which had two ingredients, herbs and mimosa, in the name that stood apart.
Marie Salamagne (photo-Jerome Bonnet)
Herba Mimosa was designed by perfumer Marie Salamagne. What she did was to add a significant green thread to the powdery expansiveness of mimosa. It is more grassy than herbal. It comes closest to a field of mimosa on a grassy slope.
Herba Mimosa opens with that grassiness matched to the powdery puffy mimosa. It is a golden ball of fuzzy green. Mme Salamagne then also amplifies the powdery nature almost as if inflating the mimosa. It grows into a gigantic puffball which is tethered to a woody base. This is a delightful take on mimosa because it shifts and moves instead of being a linear accord.
Herba Mimosa has 8-10 hour longevity and average sillage.
I am definitely not the target audience for these collections of accords. I find them a bit cynical in the way they ask the consumer to finish the job by buying two or three bottles to make their own concoction. Which is why the only one I enjoyed is the one which didn’t need another one to be interesting. If you’re looking for one from this collection Herba Mimosa is probably it.
Disclosure: This review is based on samples provided by Nordstrom.
–Mark Behnke
