Beauty Clinic: Scents to cheer a sick friend
Q. I have a friend with cancer who is being cared for in her home. I would like to send her a lovely fresh comforting scent that she could sprinkle on her bed linen as well as herself. It needs to be something not too strong and suitable for daytime obviously.
A. We’re so sorry to hear about your friend. But we do have a suggestion – well four, in fact – that we hope she will like.
The classic 4711 Original Eau de Cologne Splash/£17 for 100ml, is world famous for a very good reason. The 4711 House of Fragrances stands a few minutes walk from Cologne Cathedral and the company has been creating this and other colognes there since 1792…
We have always loved this delicious light fragrance, which manages to be both reviving and comforting. We use it ourselves – most lately for Sarah while moving house when she really needed something enlivening to splash around. (For scent aficionados, the top notes are citrusy lemon, orange oil and bergamot with basil and peach, the middle heart notes are a bouquet of cyclamen, lily, jasmine and Bulgarian rose with dashes of melon, all on a soft comforting woody base with cedar, patchouli, sandalwood, musk, oak moss and Tahitian vetiver.)
And the wonderful news is that 4711 has very recently added three new floral versions featuring Lilac, Rose and Jasmine, each £18 for 100ml – all in the iconic faceted bottles that everyone loves so much. As they say, it’s a new way of ‘saying it with flowers’…
While we’d say the original 4711 Cologne was suitable for (and, as we know, beloved by…) all genders, this new Floral Collection is very feminine. A sick friend of ours was enchanted by the Rose fragrance: the first fresh notes of mandarin, bergamot and green tea lead on to the heart notes of rose, with a touch of freesia and cyclamen, over a base of musk and sandalwood.
As devotees of Jasmine too, we love this version, which is rather more sensual than the Rose, with its Mediterranean notes of neroli and bergamot alongside the predominant jasmine, over a woody velvety base of tonka bean with a hint of musk.
Thirdly, Lilac! That’s started us humming ‘we’ll gather lilacs in the Spring again’ (as the old Ivor Novello song goes…) And we will! Meanwhile, lets all dream as we inhale that like-no-other scent of Lilac, accompanied by freesia, bergamot and peach, with comforting sandalwood and musk as base notes. This might be suitable for your friend, we think, bringing with it the promise of new shoots and fragrant blossoms.
Each of the new 4711 Floral Collection is £18 for a splash-around 100ml (and on special offer at time of writing). So maybe more than one?
Available from Boots stores and boots.com
