Norma Kamali Violette: A true violet floral

Violets have been on my mind the past few months.  This summer when I couldn’t wear much of anything due to the heat and humidity, I turned to Annick Goutal La Violette quite a bit.  It was either the weather or the simple fact that I love Goutal’s La Violette so much. The Goutal Violette is perfectly powdery, but not plasticky, and it smells like true violets with a hint of green and a dash of anise.  I’ve had a long struggle with violet fragrances over the years.  I still haven’t found one, aside from the Goutal Violette, that I really think is The One.  The new Tom Ford Violet Blonde is one its way to me, tracking number says it should arrive by the end of this week, so I’m revisiting all my violet scents in an effort to make comparisons once the Tom Ford arrives.  While sniffing around my ‘violet cabinet’ I found Norma Kamali Violette and I can’t imagine what my problem has been all this time, because the Kamali Violette is really great and I should have written about it, or at least been wearing it more often.

Norma Kamali Violette opens purple.  It smells like purple floral syrup.  It starts off heavier than it ends; I’d classify NK Violette as a light-medium weight fragrance by the time it dries down.   I think what I have been looking for all this time is a violet that smells of violet flowers most prominently, with less green than say Penhaligon’s Violetta, and much less powder than say Guerlain Meteorites and a bit more oomph, less delicacy than Goutal’s Violette.  It sounds like I’m describing Guerlain’s Insolence in edp, but that one, while extremely violet-y, ends up a bold fruity floral and not so much a violet soliflore on me (I do love Insolence edp, though). NK Violette is strongly about violet florals with less green and less powder than most other violet scents.    NK Violette is also much less candied and doesn’t remind me of violet flavored candy treats.  NK Violette dries down to a more subtle scent than the big purple syrup opening.  Once it settles in, it becomes a cool, dry violet; a complete violet floral, with hardly any green or earthiness.   This is all about the flower.  And it’s very well done; it stays true to the scent all the way to dry down and many hours thereafter.