Note Pyramid
Jean Marie Farina
Roger and Gallet Jean Marie Farina Eau de Cologne is the fragrance the whole company was built around, and it is still the reason a good many people know the name at all. It is a cologne in the old and literal sense. Lemon leads, thin and bright and almost astringent, the smell of a cut rind rather than of a sweet drink. Orange and petitgrain make the middle, the first softer and rounder than the lemon, the second taken from the orange tree's own twigs and leaves, which is why it reads green and slightly bitter where the fruit reads sweet. Then lavender and rosemary dry it out completely. Lavender gives the herbal, faintly soapy calm that classical cologne depends on, and rosemary is the sharper of the pair, camphorous and clean, the smell of the crushed needle.
Five materials, no modern trickery, and no attempt at a long drydown. Cologne concentration is low by design and this one is meant to be used in quantity: splashed after shaving, patted on the back of the neck in heat, reapplied whenever you like. An hour or two of real presence is the honest expectation, and the clean trace afterwards is the point. It reads entirely unisex, and in practice it is worn most by people who want to smell washed rather than perfumed. Summer, travel and recovery from a bad night are its natural uses, and it is among the few fragrances that work perfectly well on a sickbed or in a heatwave, when anything denser becomes unbearable.
The house was founded in Paris in 1862 by two brothers in law, who bought the Farina business of 1806 together with the cologne that carried its name, a preparation the company traces back to a formula called Acqua Mirabilis of 1693. Roger and Gallet went on to invent the round soap in 1879 and has made bath and body products since the 1950s.
Please note: images are a guide only. Packaging and bottle design may occasionally differ from those shown due to manufacturer updates or promotions.
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