FREDERIC MALLE En Passant Eau de Parfum

So beautiful, so so beautiful. I've been hearing about this one for ages and the descriptions usually sound like poetic hyperbole. But lo and behold, it really is all that.

On the blotter, it smells like a sepia-toned photograph of a lilac. But on my skin, it's like catching the scent of lilac in the air on a warm spring morning, just before the dew burns off. Somewhat like with Philosykos, Giacobetti created not just a scent here but an olfactory mise en scene. It's stunning.

I'm testing out a sample now but not sure I would invest in a full bottle. I'm noticing a pattern with Frederic Malle perfumes - they are scents that I feel like I need to keep samples of for reference, just to be able to smell now and again because they are incredible works of art and heartbreakingly beautiful, but for me they might not be so wearable.

With En Passant, although I appreciate it and even love it, would I actually reach for it? It's so translucent and ephemeral. I wonder if it would get exasperating to feel like my scent is always passing by on the breeze, just out of reach.

I cried when I smelled this for the first time. Smells exactly like a neighbor's lilac bush I used to "borrow" branches from when I was a little girl. Also smells like baking bread in the background, which reminds me of walking around this one bagel store in Fells Point (Baltimore city). Reminds me of happy, innocent times. It's as if someone broke into my head and turned memories into a perfume. I don't think I'd ever wear this because I actually love it TOO much.

En Passant is beautiful, elusive, and ineffably chilly.

It is precisely lilac, without the romance of a bouquet of blossoms. There is a rainy, green austerity in it. These are the neighbors’ lilacs, and you are not allowed to touch them. You can only stand by the fence and smell them through the raindrops.

The cucumber-water notes lend it a health-spa-zen character, and—reminiscent of DUMBO lemonade—it’s way too cool for sugar, and leaves me chasing the flavor.

This is a low-key power scent. It’s distractingly faint, but undeniably present. A go-to for hot days, and those occasions when you want to smell cool and imposing, and have everybody wonder, but nobody dare ask you what you’re wearing.

After spending the day wearing this, I rolled on some Pacifica French Lilac, just for the uncomplicated sweetness of it, and it felt like eating ice cream in bed after a day of elegantly composed salads.

The name En Passant, I'd like to think, is in reference to the very brief time in which we get to experience the extraordinary burst of the lilac bloom. In North America, the mid-Atlantic states get to experience this as late spring turns to summer, usually late May.

Personally I grew up with lilacs all around me, rows of huge magnificent bushes lining my grandparent's driveway, and a few smaller bushes in my own backyard. I know what it is to wait and wait, to experience it for a week or two, then it becomes a lovely green bush the other 50 weeks of the year. We wouldn't plant it if those one to two weeks weren't worth it! The lilac is a plant with a short skirt and a long jacket.

In my college years, longing for home, I picked up the Yves Rocher. I also swear there used to be a Lilac body spray made by Bath and Body Works that smelled similar to the YR. Those were just, BOOM. Like, full on, peak bloom, stick your face in the blossoms on the brightest purple bush. Here I am, my name is lilac. And I enjoyed them for that. Unadulterated lilac smell greed with big sillage.

But anybody who knows the lilac knows there are many varieties of the bush that range in color and smell. And each bush itself smells different on different days. And only during peak bloom days does it have that incredible sillage.

That is why I appreciate En Passant. It is green -- much greener than the Yves Rocher or the Bath and Body Works. It's most definitely lilac, but it is not the bush on its peak day while you're being greedy about it. It is a subtle, beautiful, smell of the plant as it goes through this cycle of buds, blossoms, and the smell disappearing as the blooms get droopy.

It ends with a powdery whisper. The lilac note is still detectable 6 hours later, but barely. It's here, it's gone. It's sad when it is gone! But that's the lifecycle, right? The Japanese appreciate the brief sakura flowering, and the petals falling, with essentially a national festival of hanami, which is flower viewing. They celebrate the brief time that the flowers bloom then fall -- the change is what is celebrated.

You want a static olfactory photograph of a lilac in full bloom? Get the two aforementioned scents. You want to appreciate the lilac's changes during it's brief magnificent bloom, appreciating the lilac "en passant"? Get this.

En Passant is a modern lilac masterpiece. My own opinion takes me by surprise because at first it seemed like a light and boring soliflore. I regretted spritzing myself all over thinking "I could have worn a better fragrance, and now I'm stuck with this boring soliflore that will never match up to Crabtree and Evelyn's Lilas perfume" (discontinued around 1998).

At first I smelled a cold and crunchy cucumber with freshly cut lilac; along with a weird, synthetic, plastic-like scent that irritated me and ruined what "could have been perfection." The perfume started out watery and clear.

As the day wore on, a marvelous scent kept making its way up to my nose. By the third time I noticed it, I figured it must be coming from me. When I put my nose to my wrist, it still didn't smell that great. But when I put my nose a few inches from my wrist and wafted, that's when the magic happened. This perfume is truly worthy of its name, Passing Through. It's the scent of purple lilac bushes in full bloom; a scent that rides around on waves of air, sneaking up on you at unpredictable times--so close that you reach out to grab it; but it slips through your fingers.

I was taken by the depth of the perfume. At times it seemed there could be more florals in it than just lilac, but I think the magic is that En Passant takes lilac to a whole new level. It's no longer a soft, innocent flower, but a velvety, rich one. The best way I can describe the scent is lilac in 3D. Lilac perfected to the point of being almost unreal. I would still love to have an $18 bottle of Lilas like in the old days, but honestly, I'd want En Passant too. It's worth the price tag.