Tatiana

What a splendid floral....... Tatiana could easily be Orange Blossom, Gardenia, Narcissus Heaven! I never smelled the original to compare ~ and as is typical of me ~ didn't even discover Tatiana until the 2000's. What a shame, as this lovely scent has been discontinued. I bought my first bottle at Walmart, while I was still a one - bottle - girl. Other than a garage sale Avon, Tatiana was the first perfume I purchased for Myself. I WILLED that first bottle to last an entire year, a result of my parents' teaching that perfume was an unnecessary extravagance. I Know better now. :) Update - Comparisons to White Shoulders are apt, since both fragrances are deliriously happy florals. Tatiana is a little simpler and brighter, lacking the spicyness of it's predecessor, IMHO. It also contains a surprising 'bitter' note that keeps the scent from becoming enormously sweet. This touch of bitterness may well be a deal breaker for some, but oh-so welcome for those who need a break from sugared florals. To explain the difference in these two beauties, Tatiana feels more like 3 or 4 soliflores layered together, rather than the honeyed floriental White Shoulders.

I wore this in 1980. Loved it! Thought it was discontinued. Flash forward to a few years ago: bought the scent for nostalgic reasons. And it was absolutely nothing like I remember. Can’t write a fair review because I can’t describe a fleeting 30-year-old memory, nor can I compare it to the reformulation. All I can say is this isn’t what I remember.

I was taking an afternoon walk with my mama down a chic shopping strip, when we decided to step into a perfume store together. I suddenly marveled at the sight of the beautiful Tatiana bottle! All my childhood memories began to flood my mind! I remembered how I used to wear Tatiana all the time while I was a little girl! It was my signature scent as a child! I asked the saleslady if I could take a whiff of the scent and when I did, it spun back all my wondrous childhood memories in the air and all around me! I didn't even realize that I had a signature scent as a child, until today! : )

This is refreshing frag that lasts all day, untouched and undaunted by other scents and the proof is what I had experienced today. I wore this with a very light hand around my ears and wrist. Of course lasting the full 9 hours. I got two nice compliments of "What IS that? It smells so nice!!" and "Who bought in oranges?"....which I consider a compliment in it's own way. Then the next shift came in. Gaaaaah! They too wore their frags, and all I could smell was , off scented vanilla and sweet sticky baby juice in plastic. Thank goodness Tatiana didn't meld in with it. It stayed apart from the mingling similar scents, that were indeed making me queasy....like a forcefield. This was a savior! It has a strong sillage and lasts all day. Initially, it's gardenia, then goes into florals and a definite orange blossom. Sweet, but not sickly sweetness. Mellows into an amber, but ever so lightly. I can't detect apple in it at all. It's a classic scent for those who thrive on uniqueness.

My Mom finally was able to give me this: It's a bottle of the Diane Von Fürstenberg scent TATIANA in the EDC. The very bottle I have had actually been gifted to my late Aunt Lizzy by Von Fürstenberg herself, way back in 1977 NYC. Despite its interesting provenance, the scent really does not thrill me all that much: It's an Aldehydic/White Floral/Musqué... (I'm not getting the "green" alluded to in the description above). TATIANA basically smells like a classier, more sophisticated version of Evyan WHITE SHOULDERS... it seems to have a hyacinth (and magnolia?) note in there, and dries down to a transparent skin-musk quality. I find it quite cloying, sickly-floral-sweet, actually-- the way a magnolia flower can go from dreamy to cloying in about 5 minutes-- and it starts to disgust me after about 10-15 minutes on my skin... It's a quality fragrance, but just "too much of a muchness", you might say... I suppose I like my florals considerably modulated by other things (woods, balsams, leather, herbs, etc.), and I like scents to be something more than merely "pretty". Just me. If this is but the EDC, I'd think the EDP and parfum would just be migraine-inducing, frankly. Sorry to be Debbie Downer.