A Midsummer Night`s Dream.

In Sweden we celebrate Midsummer. It is one of the most important hollidays in Sweden, and I think only Christmas is "bigger". In Sweden the summer is short, so it is important to celebrate the summer solstice here. The way midsummer is celebrated is heathen. Even tough the Swedish Christian Church has tried to make us celebrate (for over a thousand years, can you imagine?) John The Baptist`s day instead, with no success. The heathen midsummer celebrations continues as always. We raise a midsummerpole, wear flowers in our hair and deep in our hearts we belive that the midsummer night is magic. Wich is easy to belive, the midsummer night in Sweden is in between light and darkness, often quite cold and misty and very, very beautiful. The shortest night of the whole year.

In Sweden, young girls and women pick seven different flowers to put under the pillow during the midsummer night. We are supposed to dream about our futural husband.

As a kid I used to celebrate every midsummer in Alträsk, a small village in northern Sweden that my mother comes from. We use to have the midsummer party at my aunts place and then we walked to our own cottage, a few kilometers away, in the midsummer night. During the walk I tried to find seven different flowers to put under my pillow, wich could be quite a challenge that time of year in northern Sweden. I was about 9 or 10 when I picked my first midsummer bouqet and I guess I picked my last in 1985, the year before I meet my husband. And what did I dream of all these midsummer nights? To be honest, nothing! There are few nights as dreamless as the midsummer nights in my life I think.

Oh well, I have tested a serie of perfumes that I first found a bit boring, maybe they become invisible among all the meteorites, catcreatures and mushroom forrests. I didn´t think there was anything wrong with them, but I didn´t enjoy them either. Until just recently.

I guess I had sniffed my noose tired on all the modern and remarkable perfumes and felt an evening that I wanted something easygoing and cozy to end the day with. So I put on a few drops of Romea D´Ameors The Great Empresses of Japan. A serie created by parfumeur Pierre Bourdon. And... before knowing I was sniffing my wrist compulsive. The Great Empresses of Japan is a delicious, fragile and alltogether wonderfully little violet fragrance. Or little, it grew on me enormously that evening. It isn´t at all a soliflore, but on my skin the violet is the main character. There is something papery with The Great Empresses of Japan, like exquisite handmade paper soaked in luxurious oils from fresh violets. This perfume bothers no one, but inspite of it`s discreation it has a small motor of warmth and strenght. It warms up beautifully and then stays with me for hours. Put a drop on each wrist at evening and you can still smell the drydown when you wake up in morning.

The Great Empresses of Japan is a small, quiet masterpiece, mystic and a bit elusive, but faithful.The kind of perfume rendering compliments from all different kinds of people.

Maybe nothing to wear to that big party, but a day at the office or at home all by your self, you feeling very comfortable and like walking around with your own private, little secret. So pretty and enchanting.

The serie of Romea D´Ameor consists of seven fragrances (offcourse, as in seven different flowers!). Besides The Great Empresses of Japan also The Great Inca Priestesses, The Mistresses of Louis XIV, The Prinsesses of Venice, The Secret Heroines of the Tsar, The Sovereigns of Egypt and The Taj Mahal`s Eternal Love. They are all light, almost ethereal, but yet saturated. Besides The Great Empresses of Japan I am very found of The Sovereigns of Egypt, but I think they are all good enough for everyone to find there own floral favourite.

Offcourse a bouqet of flowers put together by a florist is very beautiful, like a piece of art with exquisite flowers all matching. But, when it comes to the Midsummer Night´s Magic there isn´t anything that can beat the little wild growing flowers that can be found in ditches and behind the threes, they are the real thing and that is how I more and more feel about the perfumes in the Romea D´Ameor serie. I wonder what happens if I put them under my pillow?