Accidental Botanist
by @gingieperfume on Tiktok

How I accidentally became the person who gets excited about flowers

I have a confession to make: I have never been a floral girl.

For most of my fragrance journey, “floral” was practically a warning label. Give me something woody, earthy, musky, clean, green, citrusy, and full of tea. Basically anything but a bouquet.

My mental image of a floral perfume was very specific: aggressively feminine, freshly cut flowers sitting in a vase on someone’s grandmother’s dining room table withering away, maybe a little powdery, maybe a little soapy, and absolutely determined to announce itself from three rooms away.

 

And then, somehow, flowers started sneaking into my perfume collection.

Not in the way I expected them to. They came disguised as fruit. As tea. As clean skin. As wet pavement and green stems. As woods. As something creamy and almost edible. As the smell of walking past someone’s garden on a warm afternoon.

Eventually I had to admit something uncomfortable: I don’t hate floral perfumes. I hate LINEAR floral perfumes. And perhaps even more surprising, I discovered that I really, really love florals when someone does something interesting with them.

If you’re like me and are someone who claims to be a floral skeptic, I urge you to try more out there. There are many that I’ve fallen head over heels for. So, in no particular order, here are the fragrances that turned me into what I like to call, an accidental botanist. 

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Régime des Fleurs — Glass Blooms
The one that made flowers feel weightless.

Notes: peony, muguet/lily of the valley, Riesling grape, tea rose, incense, ylang-ylang, sandalwood, tonka, ambrette musk.

Trying Glass Blooms was the moment I realized a floral fragrance doesn’t have to smell like flowers in a vase. It is sheer, sparkling, effortlessly soft, and extremely delicate. The Riesling grape gives the florals this strange little sparkle, making the peony and muguet feel juicy and effervescent rather than traditionally “floral.” The tea rose adds a baby soft rosy texture, while incense, sandalwood, tonka and ambrette keep the whole thing from floating away completely.

The vibe is vintage satin slip dresses, sipping a glass of your favorite dry white wine, dusting powder, and taking a bubble bath in a rosy pink fully tiled bathroom with a matching pink tub. If flowers were made out of ribbons, this would be what they smelled like.

What I love most is the texture. I wish I could fully describe it with words but I’m afraid I can’t do it justice. It’s silky smooth to put it simply. One of the most well blended fragrances I’ve ever had the pleasure of wearing. It’s almost like I can feel the velveteen texture of rubbing fresh petals between my fingers. A stunning composition that I don’t think will ever be replicated in my collection. I don’t put Glass Blooms on and feel like a walking bouquet. I feel elegant, refined, clean, and comforted. That distinction is very important to me.

 

Diptyque — Ilio
The one that taught me that a floral can be a vacation that I wish that I could afford.

Notes: prickly pear, bergamot, jasmine and iris.

The vibe is sun-warmed skin, Mediterranean beaches, linen, and your favorite high-end shampoo that always feels like a splurge. Jasmine isn’t demanding to be the star, nor is it even on the forefront for me. It marks the first fragrance with jasmine in the notes list that I ever enjoyed, thus giving it a rightful place on this list.

Ilio is probably the easiest floral on this list to explain to someone who thinks they don't like florals. Because, honestly, you smell the fruit first. It's bright, juicy, and sun-drenched, with prickly pear giving the fragrance its distinctly Mediterranean personality. It opens with punchy bergamot - which adds freshness - while jasmine and iris create airiness that reads like expensive shampoo on my skin.

Ilio made me realize that I don’t necessarily dislike floral notes themselves. Or even white florals which were particularly difficult for me to enjoy.
I just don’t want to smell like the concept of a flower. A flower growing somewhere warm, surrounded by fruit, sunlight and greenery?

Now we’re talking.

 

Frédéric Malle — En Passant
My first well done lilac.

Notes: lilac, cucumber, white musk and cedar.

En Passant is probably the fragrance on this list that most directly challenged my anti-floral agenda. Because it is unapologetically about a flower: Lilac.

Lilac as a note was the most important for me to find that actually got it right in perfume though. I, like many I’m sure, have childhood sentiments attached to lilacs, so their composition in a fragrance had to be perfectly executed for me to even entertain wearing one. En Passant was the first I tried that did it beautifully.

It doesn’t smell like someone dumped a bottle of “Lilac Air Freshener” onto your skin. I have had run-ins with my fair share of Febreeze lilacs in my search. Believe me.

Olivia Giacobetti’s composition is dewy and atmospheric: green stems, cool cucumber, soft lilac, white musk and cedar. The vibe is a cool spring morning, an open window with wet greenery and lilac bushes just outside. It is absolutely beautiful.

There is something incredible about a perfume that doesn’t feel like it’s trying to perform or overcomplicate something with such natural beauty like lilacs. This fragrance manages to savor the lilac almost entirely through the wear which I appreciate so much.

 

Sorce — Beyond the Veil
The one that made flowers magical.

Notes: bergamot, magnolia, wisteria, iris, white chocolate, sandalwood, cashmere and musk.

Beyond the Veil is where my floral journey starts getting a little...sweet and whimsical.
Magnolia, wisteria and iris create this soft purple and white floral haze, while sandalwood, cashmere and musk wrap everything in something warm and plush. And then there is white chocolate, which sounds like it should turn the whole thing into a dessert but somehow it functions more like a creamy sweetness underneath the flowers. Incredibly well-blended and I think it’s my favorite Sorce fragrance to date.

The vibe is a secret garden, fairy wings, powdered petals, cashmere and a little bit of edible magic. This is also a great example of why I’ve come around on florals! I need contrast or something FUN. This is fun.

The florals in Beyond the Veil aren’t sitting there by themselves screaming "We are FLOWERS!" They’re blended with something extremely unexpected. White chocolate. That’s what makes them interesting and wearable for me.

 

ROAN — Porcelain Pulse
The one that blended my first fragrance love with something I thought I hated

Notes: carrot, rhubarb, pear, black tea, cardamom, peony, Darjeeling tea, dried apricot, lily,
musk, vetiver, amber, tobacco, and hay.

If you know anything about my taste, this is the most predictable of the list. Tell me something has a tea note and I’m jumping all over it. Lily however, is one of those notes that historically, has made me run in the complete opposite direction. That’s what makes Porcelain Pulse so special.

Porcelain Pulse makes flowers feel atmospheric and edible without actually being a classic gourmand. The opening is tart, earthy and fruity: carrot, rhubarb, pear, black tea and cardamom. Then the peony and lily arrive alongside Darjeeling tea and dried apricot. The drydown brings in hay, tobacco, vetiver, amber and musk.

The vibe is an old English tea room, porcelain cups, Beatrix Potter illustrations, a slightly overgrown garden outside the window, and a book you’ve been reading for hours.
The tea is important. It gives the florals structure and body. The peony and lily become part of the story. They’re surrounded by tannic black tea, earthy vetiver, hay and tobacco. The result is warm, textured and slightly earthy.

This is probably the fragrance that best represents the biggest lesson I’ve learned about myself as a perfume lover: To never turn my nose at a fragrance that has a note I’ve “completely sworn off”

Room 1015 — Sonic Flower
The one that made me fall in love with the original Glossier You DNA all over again

Notes: carrot seed, pink pepper, orris, jasmine petals, ambroxan, cashmere woods and skin
musks.

The vibe is clean skin, a cashmere sweater, getting into freshly washed sheets after an everything shower, and the familiar comfort of another person’s warmth. 

If you’ve ever smelled the original formulation of Glossier You, Sonic Flower immediately makes sense. They’re clearly part of the same fragrance family: that soft, intimate combination of pink pepper, iris-like powder, ambroxan and skin musk that somehow manages to smell simultaneously clean, warm, powdery and like your skin, but it’s infinitely better than Glossier’s offering in my opinion. Glossier itself describes You around creamy iris, sparkling pink pepper, ambrette and ambrox. But to my nose, Sonic Flower is what I wish the original You had been.

It’s less about the pink pepper and more about the musk and orris. Sonic Flower has that incredibly addictive your skin, but somehow softer and cleaner quality that made the original You such a phenomenon for me in the first place. But where You can feel sharp and sophisticated, Sonic Flower feels more transparent and musky. The ambroxan and cashmere woods give it a clean, warm, second-skin quality without drowning out the orris. And this is where Sonic Flower became particularly important to my “accidental botanist” journey.

Because technically, yes, it’s a floral.

But if you told me that without showing me the name, I don’t think “floral perfume” would be the first thing I’d say. I smell musk, I smell orris, I smell earthiness from the carrot seed, I smell soft woods, and warm skin. The jasmine is there but it’s not at all overpowering. It’s woven into the composition rather than presented as a big, heady white floral.

That’s exactly the kind of floral I can get behind.

And honestly? I think Sonic Flower is a better executed version of the original Glossier You idea in general. Not because it’s radically different. It definitely isn’t. That’s actually the appeal. It takes that same intimate, powdery, musky skin scent formula and gives it more dimension and oomph. 

So, apparently, I like flowers now.

Looking at this list, the pattern is almost embarrassingly obvious and these are just the tip of the iceberg of florals in my collection now. I don’t love florals because they’re floral. I love them because of what surrounds the flowers and what the florals add to the atmosphere of the fragrance they’re in.

Give me florals that feel like a pink tiled bathroom. That add fresh dewy elements with an oddball note like cucumber. Florals that smell like vacations I wish I got to post on my Instagram. Give me florals that feel like I’m living inside of a peter rabbit book or remind me of a perfume lost to reformulations. That’s when flowers become interesting to me.

Maybe that’s the secret I was missing all along: a flower doesn’t have to be the whole fragrance. With a little digging, I found florals that offered me much more. And somewhere along the way, without really meaning to, I stopped avoiding florals at all. These have taught me I don’t need to be so hesitant.

Now I’m the person everyone thinks of when they see Iris which is something I’m quite proud of. I hope that I can inspire folks to go on the same journey to find a few flowers they actually like. Then a few more. Then suddenly you’re standing in the middle of a perfume shop with your nose buried in a blotter, genuinely excited to find out what blooms next.

Accidental botanist, indeed.