Dusita have been hugely hyped. They won an Art and Olfaction award 2017 and Melodie De L’Amour has received a tonne of attention from the movers and shakers in the perfume world following their early success.

But is it really any good? Like, really? As in go and sell your granny so you can buy a bottle good? Or is it all style and no substance?

Listed notes

Gardenia, honey, tuberose, broom, lily of the valley, peach, Indian jasmine, cedar and musk.

The brand

Dusita only launched in 2015, so in the media eye at least they benefit from being all new and shiny. They’re still very firmly in the honeymoon phase of development and only time will tell as to if they can continue the success that they have achieved thus far. Like that old saying from Aristotle about swallows making a Summer goes, a couple of awards doesn’t make a great perfume house…yet. They are certainly off to a very strong start though.

The force behind Dusita is Pissara Umavijani, who grew up in Thailand, bringing her passion for fragrance to France in 2011 with a view to starting up her own line made of the highest quality ingredients. Dusita provide more background on their inspiration and journey so far on their website.

First brownie point that we are giving the company is for the fact that they have a refreshingly un-perfumy marketing blurb. By that I mean that the oblique references to weird things that have nothing to do with scent are minimised. Here at The Sniff we have an admittedly love/hate relationship with perfume marketers, but it’s nice to read a fairly straightforward website for once.

But now, the scent itself.

Top notes

I’m sorry, I just can’t remain impassive any more; oh my days this perfume is gorgeous!

I really wanted to not like it, feeling that it couldn’t possibly justify the hype and yet somehow it still manages to be mouth-wateringly scintillating and brain-twirlingly intoxicating despite that, and despite us trying really to find fault with it.

The initial spray releases a huge scent cloud of shimmering white woods, florals and fruits. It is, at least at first like a glorious firework but instead of gunpowder it explodes into an abundance of glorious, nose-zinging accords.

The scent starts off really playfully because with those first few inhales it’s really hard to tell if it’s going to develop into something fruity, floral or woody and for a few moments it really keeps you guessing. Initially the combination of white wood and strong florals give the impression of a delicate touch of incense, fleetingly, right at the very edges of the scent. It quickly smoothes, however, and allows the fruit to come through more strongly.

The fruity dimension to the fragrance is bold and starts off juicy and almost sour – it reminded us of grapefruit for a moment – but sweetens as it warms, harmoniously playing with the honey notes that develop too, reminding us a little of Pure Azure for a moment.

Suddenly we’ve gone from a scent which could be a sweet woody one, to sitting in a garden on a summer’s day eating a bowl of peaches and honey. It’s utterly divine.

Heart notes

Melodie De L’Amour really comes into its own in the heart, it’s fruity and fresh and lively. It evokes the experience of biting into a ripe peach, the tart skin like wet velvet against your tongue; you can almost smell the fuzziness when you sniff this stuff.

The jasmine comes through really strongly here too. It’s creamy, powdery but retains a lovely airy quality as well that means it’s enlivening and invigorating rather than heavy and stodgy like jasmine sometimes can be in perfumes.

If the fragrance started off teasing us as to which way it was going to go, the florals really do have the heart. When you wear this it feels as if your very own skin is blooming. It’s a very cocooning sort of scent that wraps you in layer upon layer of white petals until you can’t help but feel that you are tucked up in your own jasmine-scented bower, delicate and heavily scented flowers surrounding you, indolent with pollen.

If a bee were to choose a perfume, then I imagine she would pick this one.

Although the florals are very bold, there is just enough peach here to stop them floating away into nothingness, or becoming too headachey sweet. The fruit notes give the whole perfume a really pleasant juicy facet that hits the same notes but on a different instrument.

Base notes

The peach does subside in the base and the florals relax into a dreamy languor to be joined by clean white musks. This is an afternoon spent laid on the lawn right in the centre of a cottage garden, wearing a straw hat, drinking Pimms and watching the bees buzz about the flowers. It’s bucolic Summer days, sun-warmed skin, relaxation and security. And it’s utterly divine.

The other stuff

The longevity of this perfume is excellent. It needs to be, and thankfully it was. It lasted until early evening without need for reapplication.

The projection is also delightful, we felt like we were wandering around clothed in shimmering white flowers all day, which was really lovely. It’s so nice that it causes this smug little smile to surface every time you catch a whiff of it. We genuinely felt very happy wearing it, it was a real mood booster. Perfect for those “British Summer” days when you can never quite relax in case that looming cloud does herald rain, the kids are arguing over who fed the dog ice cream, and your sandals have rubbed a blister between your toes. This perfume would definitely make all those things better. Maybe.

To our minds this is a scent which sits quite firmly in the stereotypically female end of the perfume spectrum. Although it wears beautifully in Spring/Summer, we could also imagine that on a grey January day it would lift your mood beautifully.

And now the downside: this Dusita’s Melodie De L’Amour is bone-chillingly, eye-wateringly, spine-tingly expensive. To date it’s the most pricy scent we have reviewed. It costs around £250 for 50ml of extrait. For that price I’d really want it to smell gorgeous AND deliver Michael Fassbender to my doorstep gift-wrapped. But it is gorgeous, it is utterly seductive, it is a delight to wear.

At that price point only extremely serious collectors or those lucky enough to be able to splash that sort of cash around are going to plump for it, this isn’t the sort of scent you take a chance on and buy on a whim, and nor should it be.

Would I buy it? If I was a millionaire I would bathe in it! Alas I am not, so I will just have to make do with sniffing the tester so hard that I think my head might turn inside out.

Dusita’s Melodie De L’Amour is available from Bloom Perfumery London who are listed as the only UK stockist on the Parfums Dusita website. A huge thank you to Bloom for supplying us with a sample of this to review, also curses for bringing such expensive beauty to The Sniff. We’re now off to sell our grannies to fund buying a bottle.

If, like us, you’re also not a millionaire, consider Pure Azure by Phaedon for honey notes, Fragrance No13 by Nikkos-Oskol for the abundance of light airy florals, or California Reverie by Van Cleef and Arpels if you’re looking for jasmine.

If you are a millionaire, please consider buying me a bottle.