Launched 2016 by niche perfumer Hiram Green, Dilettante is a rapturously beautiful fruity floral fragrance based on a triptych of orange flower, petitgrain and essential oil of orange. Those are all the notes that are listed on the Hiram Green Perfumes website. Like many perfumers, Hiram is guarded with the notes, even over lunch with a friend in Toronto, and while it can be frustrating, I respect him and others like him, who want you to have your own experience of their fragrances when you wear them. Besides, Dilettante is so rapturously beautiful that it really doesn’t matter if you know it has or doesn’t have musk or honey or beeswax in it. On me, Dilettante opens, full on with the glorious, heady scent of orange blossom – floral and sweet, lush and indolic – this orange blossom is true to nature, and it’s at the forefront - it’s not hidden, shadowed or shy. For me, it is the smell of sunshine, of summer, of happiness. Over time, petitgrain gives it a gorgeous green aspect that seems to extend the orange blossom before it gets warm and spicy from cinnamon. Orange oil makes it sweet and fruity and keeps it going on and on, right to the drydown. On me, there is a waxy phase, which gives it a texture I like. The citrus is balanced at the base by warm, resinous, ambery tolu. Dilettante’s drydown is incomparable. Fruity, floral and softly resinous, with no bitterness or citrus tang. It’s so refined and, yes, uplifting that it isn’t just a summer fragrance and is so balanced that it can be worn by a man or a woman. Notes: orange flower, petitgrain and essential oil of orange, cinnamon, tolu balsam.
