My mother does not wear perfume. She and my father are (allegedly) allergic to it. When I excitedly showed her my new bottle of L’Artisan Safran Troublant last month, her only comment was “It’s not terrible.” (You don’t even want to know what she said about L’Heure Bleue.) My mother has only really connected with my love of fragrances on one occasion: when I asked her to try a discontinued perfume, Guerlain Meteorites. Upon smelling Meteorites, she gasped and said that it smelled just like a violet-scented doll that she had as a child. She even compared it to Proust’s beloved madeleines.
Tuca Tuca will be practically Proustian for anyone with happy memories of violet-flavored confections like Parma Violets or Choward’s Violet Mints. This gorgeous perfume is as instantly cheerful as its name. Violet fragrances are tricky. They tend to be unbalanced, skewing either too sweet, too powdery, or too green. Tuca Tuca skillfully avoids each of these potential pitfalls. Tuca Tuca is one of the very few perfectly candied violet perfumes, and is no doubt the most easily accessible and inexpensive of the lot. At a criminally cheap $29 an ounce, I consider this a must-try for anyone seeking a sweet violet fragrance.
A word of caution: I like Tuca Tuca best in the solid perfume formulation. The liquid version is a little screechier.
SCENTS OF SELF 
Me too! hahaha!
I love your mother’s Proustian reference. “It’s not terrible” HAHAHA! _reminds me of my partnerrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!) and you made me laugh out loud with L’Heure Bleue thing…
PS: Harakus!
Ahhh, the joys of living with a perfume non-enthusiast. Although maybe one household couldn’t handle two perfumistas…
why two…? = you mean You & Zelda?
I would love to know (actually I’m dying for!!) what your mother said about l’Heure Bleue, haha! It has to be a SUUUUUUUUUUPER HIT that I can’t afford to lose……………………..
I now want to pull out my Tuca Tuca for work tonight!
I am sure I speak for all of us when I say that we envy you for working at a place where a perfume like Tuca Tuca is not only allowed, but encouraged!
Whhhheeeee! yay! 🙂
Btw – the oil concentrations in the perfumes are all different.
Solid=10% oil
Spay sticks =15% oil
Spray bottle=20% oil
During slow times in the shop it’s interesting to see what versions (concentrations) of which fragrances work best on my skin.
Ugh, I should’ve tried it in the solid version I guess. The liquid version smelled SO BAD on me that even the lady who worked in the store and sprayed it on my arm pulled away from me in disbelief that she had just inflicted that on me, funny, isn’t it?!
I’m glad you included that word of caution, so I am expanding on it 😉
LOL! You poor thing! I like that the saleslady was at least honest with you, instead of insisting that it smelled gorgeous so that you would just buy it already.
I have it on now – in the spirit of scientific inquiry rather than any spontaneous inclination – and I am with your mother on this one.. It is candied violet as you say, in high definition, 3 D and Dolby Surround Sound. It is a hyperrealistic violet vortex into which I am being ineluctably sucked. No really, it isn’t half bad if you like that sort of thing. It is violet verisimilitude. A Lushified Meteorites, pretty much – yes, I’ll go with that.
The good thing about these posts of yours is that you are making me take down that brown paper nose bag from the shelf above my desk (pictured in my New Year’s Resolutions post), and get the Lush samples out at last. So thanks for that – it might have taken me longer of my own accord.
It also appears to make me write in purple prose. ; – )
Oh, it’s lavender prose at worst! 🙂 And I’m glad to hear that you’re trying the Lush samples now! Any favorites emerging?
To speak of “favourites” would be premature, but this Vanillary one I promised to retry is really quite okay. I think I smelt the original formulation and there was something odd / OTT about it. Now I did like B-Scent as I recall, while Lust and Ladyboy were moderately terrifying.
Promise me you’ll try Vanillary in the solid form! It’s even more toned down as a solid.
So if one is seeking a candied violet perfume, should one buy Tuca Tuca or track down a bottle of Meteorites at an online discounter? Just theoretically, of course? 😉
It depends on whether you like powder or not. Meteorites is much more powdery, and is also much harder to find. Personally, I like Tuca Tuca better- I actually returned my bottle of Meteorites eventually.