BYREDO La Tulipe Eau de Parfum

La Tulipe is my latest love affair.

It opens with green, crisp, dewy freesia, the kind you smell at the florist.
mixed in a cool breeze from a bamboo forest.

The florals gets sweeter, warmer and slightly spiced after 1 hour of wear.
But sits rather linear from beginning to end.

Lasting power is not the best,
but I simply cannot resist this airy little beauty.

LOVE IT!!

Mine is a shameless result of too much time spent in the tax-free part of the airport. Mind you, in the middle of winter, just before Christmas. But who cares if you find your favourite flower, with its meaty leaves, velvety petals, golden heart and slightly sour smell of first spring days, asking to be taken home? I did as ordered. And waited for a few months, until it was perfect time to wear La Tulipe.

A beauty. Excellent creation by Byredo considering that tulips are the epitomes of spring, yet there are only a few varieties that have fragrant blossoms. Usually its everything else that smells fresh and peppery- bulbs, leaves, stems... La Tulipe captures all of it, plus lasts and projects well. Intoxicating dewy, fresh and feminine. Incredibly authentic-smelling, but not exactly a soliflore- you can also smell hyacinth, freesia and lilac in the background. But it has linear development, which for this particular scent is a huge plus in my book. A must for all the tulip-and spring-flower lovers and one of my favourite Byredos.

EDIT June 2021: Got the La Tulipe small perfumed oil to go with the scent, and if used decent amount of oil under the perfume, it easily doubles the performance, projects really well like this too. My guess is that Byredo oils are there to extend the longevity and projection, works well, but a bit cheeky considering the total price.

Whenever I wear this people around me ask "where does this smell come from?". A devil in disguise. It's not overwhelmingly sexy, nor mysterious, nor dangerous, nor even classy, yet it attracts people close to you like a magnet.
It's fresh but not at all sporty. It's both warm and breezy and inoccent without being boring. If it were a woman she would have very long light brown hair, walking barefoot in a field of tulips in the first morning hours. If you like complex perfumes you will hate this. If you like your perfumes bold, stay away. This is linear, straitforward, simple and it smells heavenly

I love florals and this smells just like fresh cut tulips, and reminds me of spring in a cold Eastern European home in the 80's, when the tulips that my mother, who was a French teacher, received from her students, would sit in their vases around our living room. Life in those days was so cold and colorless due to the privations of that existence forced on us by the Russians, a life lacking heating, electricity and even basic food staples like bread or eggs or milk, that the beauty of those tulips and their scent seemed like a magical escape hatch to a better world full of infinite probabilities.

I've been very dissapointed with Byredo fragrances before as they are expensive and always lack something to be worth the price tag, but La Tulipe has earned her way in my wishlist.
When I first applied it, I feared that it was to airy, too gentle, but it was marvelously beautiful. It opened crispy green with gentle and feminine freesia, it felt a bit like cold spring morning with wet grass, flowers all around and it smells just lovely. The heart part and the drydown is very similiar - sweet flowers with just tiny bits of vetyver.
The sillage is not great, it stays close to skin, but is very noticable when you let someone close enough, the scent is made to be this way as it is very inviting, sweet and comforting.
The longevity is okay for me, it lasts for 5-6 hours and even if the price tag would ask for a longer lasting time, I find it to be okay.

A must try for those who love feminine florals.