Tous!

For some reason, I have been thinking a lot about scent this summer. Everywhere we have been, my youngest daughter and I have been smelling the roses...literally! We are looking for proper, old-fashioned, smelly roses and they are hard to come by, let me tell you, but last weekend our luck was in. We finally found some perfectly heady coral-pink ones at Eltham Palace when we went to the Art Deco fair that was being held there. This childhood home of Henry VIII was turned into a state-of-the-art Art Deco showpiece home in the early 1930s and is a fine place to visit at any time, fair or no fair, especially if you, too, are a stickler for roses-as-they-should-be.

Scent is so important as it holds a direct link to our memories and rockets us back to certain times and places whether we like it or not, so the scent we wear has to be well-chosen. I had been wearing Clarins' Eau Ressourçante for a while and, while I am still fond of it, I was ready for a change, but everything I tried was too "perfumey". I wanted something a little more natural, so I was pleased when a sample for Tous H₂0 arrived in my Beauty Box, and even more pleased to discover that a percentage of the sales goes toward supporting Oxfam's programs to provide safe drinking water to the developing world. I love companies that think a little outside the box and add this kind of value to their products!

When I first started using my sample, I wasn't totally sold. However, I realized I had to rethink my opinion when I finished that sample and immediately went rummaging in my daughters' room to snitch back the samples I had given them! It has top notes of lemon and lavender, followed by rose and jasmine, which is a beautiful combination. It smells very fresh and "bright", like summer, but has warm, woody base notes of cedar, amber and sandalwood to ground it and keep it from being too girly. I have been wearing it for a year now and after not much internal debate, am about to order another bottle!