Lys Méditerranée (2000)
by Editions de Parfums Frederic Malle

Lovely, very realistic floral with great longevity. Will last all day. Projection is moderate, but you won’t forget you are wearing it. I love the smell it leaves on my shirts after wearing it, which will last for days. You will keep going back to your closet to sniff your collar, just because :-)

1990’s overload. Absolute torture / nightmare for me personally but I do appreciate that it exists in the world.

If there was a life blood that connected the 90’s cultural zeitgeist from beginning to end, from the lily and sunflower print bicycle shorts and ‘rodeo drive’ aesthetic of the early decade to the mid-1990’s bubba / southern belle chic moment (designing women, grace under fire, Forrest Gump, bill clinton, Kathie Lee, etc) to the Late 1990’s where CK1, wet-look, gelled hair, and the Lilith fair reigned supreme - it would smell like this. If you are a millennial, you wore CK1 to your aunt’s Lily-filled wedding. Now you can wear Lys Med to transport you back in time.

Anti-sweet, floral opening. Green. Bitter. Borders on fetid or indolic. Rooty-ginger, old fading lilies. The flowers are too "rotted" for my pleasure. The heart is more civilized, adding a touch of root, near the earth, aromas. More green. Lily increases. Pungent still.

I get more angelica greenness. Musk is crusty, almost dirty. I like my florals, lily scents, with less green, more sugar. Not for me.

Wonderful aquatic/marine scent and one of my favorite Malle perfumes. I'm no fan of lily scents, but this one won me over by miles. Lys Mediterranee is also quite a 'clean' scent and one has to work hard to find something offensive in this perfume and can easily be worn by both men and women.

Sadly the longevity of Lys Mediterranee is a slight disappointment and only lasts about 4 hours at most on me, which is the only reason I haven't sprung for a full bottle.

A perfectly nice perfume, probably most notable for what it isn't than what it is.

With the 90's marine perfume fad leading into the 00's aquatic fad, it became quite popular to try to make "aquatic florals" by mixing lily chemicals with cucumber and salt. There are a lot of those out there, and they're starting to smell pretty dated.

Thankfully, Frederic Malle went for the long game with Lys Méditerranée, opting for a timeless white flowers accord and a pinch of powdery musk as the backbone of this, his lily perfume. It's quite nice, with a hint of orange blossom for richness, though the powder can get a little sneezy when over-applied.

All told, Lys Méditerranée deserves a thumbs up, though I think there are more interesting lilies out there (Guerlain's beautiful but prohibitively expensive yearly Muguet perfumes spring to mind, as well as Cartier's interesting lily/chocolate Basier Vole). One for the floral fanatics.