¡Ombligo!

Violettes de Toulouse


I've never been to France, let alone Toulouse but I'm familiar with it. For years my sister has had pen pals from all over the world and her longest pen pal relationship been with her friend Fabien who lived right outside Toulouse. Several years ago, Fabien came to visit. He brought with him a gift of a Occitan cross pendant and a handkerchief embroidered with violets.

His visit here was certainly interesting, um to leave it as interesting would be an understatement. As I was still in college at the time, he went to campus with me one day. My sister who was also in school at the time couldn't really take time away so we asked him what he wanted to do and he mentioned he wouldn't mind staying at the house while everyone was gone. We figured, he had cable and the internet so how much trouble can a person get into right?

Well, I noticed on the computer that there were cookies for certain porn sites. Um, gay porn sites. At first I asked my sister if she and Fabien were just having fun with the computer but she denied any knowledge of it. So, I cleared the cookies and left the computer clean for the next day.

Come the next day Fabien went shopping with my Dad, so my sister and I checked the cookies on the computer and we found more cookies to porn sites. We really didn't know what to do with that information and we were comfortable with keeping it to ourselves.

Until my sister went out to dinner with Fabien and my Dad as I went out with friends and my Mom was out of town. At this point my sister and Fabien weren't really hitting it off as well as they expected. So they started fighting and yelling at the restaurant and then my sister yelled out at him "Well, at least I wasn't looking up gay porn."

Oh the shit hit the fan that day! Fabien had never mentioned his sexuality but my sister always suspected that he was gay. As both my sister and I have had many gay friends it's never been a problem with us. Fabien had kept referring to his friend who we assumed was his boyfriend but as he never brought up the subject, neither did we.

After the fiasco at dinner, Fabien decided to take an early flight home in the morning. As he and my sister weren't on speaking terms I had to act as the "middle man" between the two parties. It turned out that this was the first time that Fabien had ever been confronted with his sexuality for he had been in the closet this entire time. He'd never told anyone before, not even his friends. That was a really long and tear filled night. We tried to convince him to stay longer in the morning but he decided that it was time to go back home.

I don't know if he ever told his family but he is for the most part out of the closet is now living in England. My sister and him aren't as close as they used to be but still on occasion write to each other.

Now back on topic with the juice, Violettes de Toulouse. I can't find any other additional notes to this pale purple fragrance other than violet. It starts off a bit alcohol heavy on me which dries down fast on me. There are hints of sandalwood and anise on me which seem to take over the fragrance for a while then the violets reappear.

It's a lovely fragrance and I think I prefer this one to Violetta di Parma which starts off too green on me. I wish the staying power were better for this fragrance, perhaps layering would solve this. I think this would be a beautiful year round from dawn to dusk fragrance.

Caswell Massey has the Eau de Toilette on sale for $16.50/3.7 oz. and the Parfum de Toilette on sale for $27.00/3.3 oz.