Vintage Gardenia with Cardamom & Myrrh (2004)
by Jo Malone

I reluctantly tried this on my skin. Think Versace Blond but a lot LOT nicer.

Never going to be for me, but it is very nice as far as gardenia goes so if you love gardenia, definitely try it out.

Vintage Gardenia is a creamy, lovely gardenia with a beautiful touch of spice. (I like any perfume that makes me feel like a Raymond Chandler femme fatale.) It's nice to layer, of course, given Jo Malone's fragrance philosophy--I love combining it with JM Orange Blossom--but Vintage Gardenia is one of the few Jo Malone fragrances that stands on its own.

A cologne which takes me back to the forties. Very pleasant and light. A shade on the sweet side after an hour or two but layering with Grapefuit takes away the sweetness. Flowery and quite wearable.

Most gardenia scents are so overtly sweet and exotic that they call to mind movies where a sad-eyed girl says to a sailor, "For an extra ten dollars you can have my sister too..."

Jo Malone took the gardenia out of the tropical brothel with her gardenia scent. The spices and woody tones give it a smooth mellowness that invites you to keep inhaling.

I wish my mother was alive to smell this. A new personal favorite.

While most of the Jo Malone scents are very simplistic and leave me cold for the most part, Vintage Gardenia made me feel instantly at home, as it reminds me of the smell in my best friend's childhood home. It is similar to a certain soap they used. Thus, Vintage Gardenia to me smells both clean and warm. I find the combination of notes to be working fantastically well, although they are quite unusual. Cardamom is one of my favourite notes, and thankfully it is present here and adds depth and character to what could be an overly heady white floral (as in some other gardenia scents). The base is warm and slightly bitter from the myrrh, which also balances the sweetness of the floral notes really well. Overall, the perfume smells to me like a combination of jasmine sambac, tuberose, cardamom and myrrh. Vintage Gardenia is one of the most original of the Jo Malone line, and my faovurite at that. In fact, it is my favourite gardenia scent so far!

When I first became scent obsessed (a few years ago), and before trying 100s and 100s of samples, I thought I liked gardenia, but changed my mind ... until this rendition. It is mostly gardenia, but has other ingredients blended in to give it a kick, that make this a very pretty and soft scent. Very wearable, very dainty. This is my favorite Jo Malone scent (so far). I can detect the tuberose, and the incense. The sandalwood is not dominate to my nose. Lasting power is about 5-6 hours (which is average on me).