April Violets is getting reviewed in June. Sue me.
I wanted the vintage version of this one, but Yardley is plagued by a downmarket vibe that makes spending $100 on a bottle feel wrong enough to not want to do it, so I shaved a zero off and grabbed the "Modern/Contemporary Classics" version instead.
My bottle is the "90% Naturally Derived Ingredients" formula. On Yardley's website, the copy on the newest bottles reads "94% Natural" because I guess British regulators asked that the company push their claims to the absolute limits. Add "Vegan & Cruelty Free" on there, and you can hear Keir Starmer fart with every depress of the atomizer.
It's no secret that I'm a lover of violets. The problem is, there's a dearth of violet fragrances on the market, and finding a daily-driver violet is no small task. My violet collection is sadly limited to Grey Flannel, Aoud Violet, Love in Black, Fahrenheit, Violetas Francesas, Royal Violets, Tres Nuit, and now April Violets, and of those, really only Grey Flannel, Fahrenheit, Violetas Francesas, and Love in Black are true dyed-in-the-wool violets.
There's a reluctance among manufacturers to produce violet fragrances because ionones are notoriously difficult on the nose, sometimes overpowering the senses, but more often fading into anosmia-induced invisibility, which then deceives the wearer into believing the perfume is off. I can see this as a problem for April Violets, which smells sturdy enough after first spray (brisk violet leaf and apple, with hints of peach, mimosa, and green leaves), but after five minutes the ionones and natural violet leaf extract take over, and the composition flickers in and out of perceptibility.
With that said, I can smell it if I focus on it, and it smells great. Delicate greens, pert fruits that aren't juvenilely sweet, and a tender, transparent violet bouquet against a dewy backdrop of aquatic violet leaf—a sanguine purple study in olfactory watercolors. I've seen reviewers bitch about it being "harsh," which raises the question: do you people also think deep tissue massages are harsh? A watery floral that lasts four hours with zero projection and fades into literally nothing is harsh?
If so, then Fahrenheit is obscenely abusive, and Grey Flannel is 60 grit sandpaper for the nose. I can't think of a gentler scent in my catalog, which says a lot, since I'm always seeking meditative green fragrances like this one. Bet it's a hit in Japan!