Ethereal Lace

The composition is unusual for how little it tries to do. Most scents build complexity through a dozen layered materials. Ethereal Lace builds its world from three: lilac, vanilla, and paper. What makes it work is that each element does the job of several. The paper accord carries the dry, faintly sweet warmth of aged paper, the kind of thing you catch when you open a book that has been sitting on a shelf for years. Sources describe it as carrying 'a hint of the sweet smell of old books.' The vanilla here is Poesie's house Vanille accord, which the brand describes as crystalline and airy.

The evolution

The opening is a quick handshake. Paper and white lilac arrive almost simultaneously, the paper dry and faintly warm, the lilac cool and slightly watery at first. There's a moment early on where it smells like walking into a room where someone was reading and just left. The lilac swells through the early wear, getting fuller and sweeter, picking up a vanilla that starts threading underneath. The heart phase is the loudest this fragrance gets, and it's not loud at all. A soft, cushiony sweetness, more the memory of a bouquet than the bouquet itself. The transition to drydown is gradual and honest. As the hours pass, the paper comes back, warmer now, more like the smell of a book held in your lap. The vanilla deepens, loses its sharper edge, becomes rounder and creamier. Eventually, what's left is a warm, papery vanilla with the ghost of lilac still threading through it.