L’HEURE BLEUE SECOND OPINION + IRIS ROOT by LOEWE (2025)

I feel that I have been a bit boring and reactionary in my knee-jerk reaction to L’Heure Bleue 26, so I decided to revisit it on my way to work via Yokohama Takashimaya. I still don’t really like it, but I would be intrigued to smell it on someone walking past; lived in a little; how it blends with human skin. At least it is original. The vast majority of ‘new’ perfumes are facile retreads of done-to-death tropes : L’Heure Bleue at least doesn’t smell like anything else ; yesterday, the ozonic facets came through to me as more muted, and the blue iris and orange blossom accord had the eerie sway of a sirenic, futuristic lagoon. I had time to have a quick sniff of the entire Loewe (a brand in a current renaissance) contemporary collection – all too brash and obvious to me, I am afraid to say, except Iris Root, which, with its chalk-cliff, cold emotivity, had me going back for a second trial. I am not really sure what I feel about iris anymore. I think I prefer it as a supporting actor:…