Lux (2006)
by Mona di Orio

Lux is a moving scent for its progressive aroma and for the story behind its creation - Mona di Orio's tribute to her mentor Edmond Roudnitska - quite beautiful in many ways . Lux meaning 'light' in latin but also I feel this scent is about the marriage or union of opposites.

Light and dark, masculine and feminine , happy and broody and so it goes on.This scent IS yoga- a union. It begins light and ends dark ,it is both male and female ,it 's both uplifting and thoughtful .

It starts intensely citrus yellowy -lemon with hints of lemongrass and slowly moves through to green with vetiver. The basenotes and the dry down are simply superb with rock rose or labdanum ,vanilla, musk and amber. There is so much depth of feeling in this.

Now I have to say that Lux ,though gorgeous, is not very original. It smells like Shalimar and somewhat similar to Le Labo Labdanum 18 - in the dry down . The lemony ,vanilla feel and the sexy lingering basenotes. Lux's vanilla ,to me, is slightly sweeter , a little more gourmand than the special burnt vanilla of Guerlain.

The middle notes of Lux remind me of Eau Sauvage by Edmond Roudnitska. Benjamin at the Harrods' Haute Parfumerie said that Lux is Mona's finished version of Roudnitska's Eau Sauvage so it is closely related. It's Eau Sauvage with a lasting base - when that was explained to me, I understood the scent more. To me, it's also Shalimar and Eau Sauvage joined - what a combination !

Longevity is also very good - the labdanum stays and stays especially on hair .
The bottle is quite something with heft. Love this. Well done .

4th March, 2011.

Candied lemon with a creamy, animalic undertow. According to di Orio the scent is indebted to Edmond Roudnitska, but I'd say the Guerlain dynasty is a more obvious influence, where notes of lemon and petitgrain, vanilla, and civet constitute a kind of admiring tour group drifting between the landmarks of Eau de Guerlain, Shalimar and Jicky (the bottles too, with their champagne cork design, are reminiscent of the early Guerlain parfum bottles). Di Orio is quick to claim a classical heritage, but she says 'Lux' and I, unfortunately, smell 'Lite': while I get a kick out of what's here – it makes me think of lemon cheesecake eaten off buttocks – the scent is a little vacant, heartless if you will, with an insistent absence between the sherbet lemon head and oozing musky base. Tasty but incomplete.

9th February, 2011.

A boozy, perfumey lemon cocktail with a touch of civet underneath. As previous reviewers have pointed out, there's a certain similarity to Jicky (and Mouchoir de Monsieur and L'eau d'Hermes) in the citrus/animalic combo, but without the lavender and less powdery. I really enjoy the tartness, juicyness, zest and zing of the lemon note, as well as the animalic note lurking underneath. The basenotes seem to support the citrus and help it keep fresh and true, unlike in most light citrus colognes where it turns flat and stale very quickly on skin. Despite the resemblance to Jicky I find Lux quite unique - definitely different enough to be worthy of inclusion in the same perfume collection. This is a citrus for citrus lovers who don't want to smell innocent and clean, an evening citrus. It's also the best lemon fragrance I've encountered, and lemon happens to be my favourite citrus note.

15th September, 2010.

The rich, sweet citrus opening is lovely, but also rather "perfumey" in a familiar way that I can't quite place. Although there's no lavender note listed, I'm reminded of Jicky, minus the civet.

As the scent develops a distinct powdery note emerges to underpin the heart, which remains sweet and fruity, with an overlay of gentle wood notes. A very light and delicately balanced vanillic accord comes to the surface as time passes, integrating with the powdery note in a velvety, yet somehow very bright base.

Eventually the sweet fruit and vanilla drive Lux into a candy-like domain, without enough dry notes for my nose. The powdery vanilla and wood drydown seems a bit conventional after the rest of the trip, but it's certainly pretty and still very well-balanced. Not as daring or original as Nuit Noire, but a nice scent nonetheless. I think I'd like it better on a woman than on myself, by the way.

11th December, 2009.

I've been obsessing about Lux since last night when I received my decant and immediately tried it on. After the surprisingly good opening, I even left alone the Muscs Koublai Khan that I received at the same time. I had envisioned that the two would layer well, with Lux being the topnote-heavy partner in the mixture and MKK providing the base. It turns out that this golden juice definitely needs no heavy artillery to hold its own on the battlefield.

You don't often experience a citrus this deep, sensual, and complex. The opening notes pierce right through you like sunlight through a vampire. After that comes a slight disappointment - a minor association to same bug spray aroma that exists in Zino Davidoff, YSL Rive Gauche and Musc Ravageur (although they could be different bug sprays, for all I know). We'll see how it develops from now on - I'm wearing this for work although it's not exactly a work fragrance, just out of curiosity. Will try and edit the experiences here as they come.

The basenotes were noticeable after the 5 and half hours of sleep that I got. But just that.

16th June, 2009.

Beautiful citrus opening – rich, semi-sharp, full-bodied, lemony; I think the high quality comes from the use of bitter orange and Petitgrain; the lemon note is full, rich, and excellent and not at all “lemon drop” at this point. This is about as opulent of a citrus opening as I’ve experienced. In my mind, citrus doesn’t normally lend itself to opulence, but, in the case of Lux, “opulent” is the proper term. But my success with this fragrance ends with the opening. I find the movement from the citrus top to the wood middle is a bit clumsy: It spends too much time in that no man’s land between the diminishing of the citrus top and the recognition of the woody / powdery middle. The citrus handles its decrescendo properly (it never completely disappears through the run of the scent) but the woods don’t seem to know how to operate on my skin. The woods develop nicely on paper, but the quality doesn’t transfer when the fragrance hits my skin – I lose about everything except the remnants of the opening citrus. On paper, the beautiful amber / musk drydown is going strong twenty hours after application. On my skin I have never achieved a decent performance of the middle and base notes through seven wearings – the fragrance is gone in an hour. Mona di Orio Lux just doesn’t like me.

9th March, 2008.