This spring I'm wearing two new favorite perfumes:  Laura Tonatto's Oltre and Diptyque's L'Eau. I should clarify that neither of these perfumes is a new release; Oltre came out in 2002 and L'Eau has been around since 1968. But they are new to me.

Laura Tonatto's Oltre is often described as a sea scent, and Tonatto's own website offers this imagery: "A breath of the ocean. In front of the endless expanse of water, Alexander the Great closed his eyes, bowed his head slightly and wept. His fate, glory and dreams behind him. Before him only the sea."

I know it's a fashion in perfume writing to describe the scene a fragrance invokes. I often see that kind of description used in perfume reviews or on designer's websites, and at first I thought the words were applied to a fragrance after it was created. However, according to Chandler Burr's The Perfect Scent, that kind of descriptive writing is often present at the very start of fragrance's creation in something called a brief.

A brief is an attempt to put a fragrance into words — or into some other medium, since Burr says, "Briefs can be videotapes, songs, paintings."

I'm comfortable enough calling Laura Tonatto's Oltre a sea scent, but if someone asked me to write  a "brief" for the fragrance, I'd say:

• It's standing under the pines beside the waterfall at Sweet Arrow Lake. It's jumping off the top of the waterfall into the black pool at the base. It's the tiny room behind the fall, between the water and the rocks, where there's just room to stand.

• It's the pure, cool water smell of my cotton nightgowns after they dry on the clothesline.

• It's the smell of water itself.

Officially, Oltre is a combination of "coastal pine, lily of the valley, seaweed and musk." I can definitely detect the top note of pine, but after that I just go into a dreamy state. I'm not surprised that I like a fragrance with lily of the valley and musk in it, though. I love Diorissimo and a wide variety of musks.

Now, despite its name, Diptyque's L'Eau doesn't smell at all like water.  It's a crazy spice of clove and carnation, citrus, and something delicate and white — all at the same time.

Perfumes: The Guide  gave L'Eau four stars and described it as "newfangled old-fashioned."  because it's based on a 16th century potpourri and clove pomander. I don't disagree. When I wear it, I feel some odd connection to an earlier time, but that doesn't mean it's out of date. To say that L'Eau is out of date would be like saying oranges or the color red are out of date. L'Eau feels absolutely vibrant.

I'll go one step further on L'Eau:  I need this scent in my life. It sustains me through the day. It feels essential now that I've found it.

According to the perfume website Basenotes, the official fragrance notes of L'Eau are cloves, geranium, sandalwood, rose, and cloves. Some people on Basenotes insulted L'Eau by calling it a clove bomb, or stating that it should be used only at Christmas or as a room spray. Tant pis.

You can buy both Oltre and L'Eau at Luscious Cargo, the only place I found that carried both scents. Luscious Cargo also sends along generous samples.