This is a tuberose. It's one of those white florals that can get misused. In fact, when I first heard that Estee Lauder (in the person of her daughter) was going to unveil a new perfume called Tuberose Garden, well I was filled with a desire to yawn.

I mean it sounded ordinary. And for some reason my initial response as I thought, "What does a perfume like Tuberose Garden smell like?" Because my answer was that it would be a cookie-cutter fragrance veering in the direction of little-old-lady scent.

Oh, WAS I WRONG. It's a wonderful scent, glorious. Everything that is good and right and fine about white florals is in this scent. I like it better each time I use it and I loved it the first time. I'm not normally the kind of person who would shop for a perfume that boasted tuberose as an ingredient, so that's why I want to warn you.

This stuff is way better than it sounds. In fact, that's my only issue with this new scent. It has kind of an old-fashioned, overly humble name.

It reminds me of New Orleans, not the post-Katrina place, but the way it was if you lived in one of the residential neighborhoods around the Garden District and you went strolling around on a summer night. It's hot in New Orleans in the summer, even at night, and the humidity makes the air seem fatter than other places. New Orleans is green but not in the modern way; it's green in the ancient way. Even in the city itself, everything is thick jumble of trees and vines and plants. Even the sidewalks are lumpy with tree roots and grass and scraggly flowers trying to burst through them. The humidity turns the darkness thick, so it feels almost like you're wearing it, and the smells of honeysuckle and other people's perfume and rose gardens and plants all get tangled up. You hear some kids off in the distance, laughing too loudly, and you hear a buzzing of insects in the vines overgrowing a porch, but what overwhelms you most of all are all of those flowers and plants in the stillness.

That's what it smells like.

OK, I'll stop now. But it's really what it reminds me of, in the best possible way.