Terra Nova Rain: Clover, Lily & Green Musk

At a glance

Rain is the signature scent of TerraNova, the family-run Berkeley, California fragrance and body-care company: a soft green floral musk of clover and lily of the valley.

It is sold mainly as a perfume oil, or “perfume essence.” No launch year or perfumer has been published.

Creation and context

TerraNova grew out of a single Berkeley shop. According to the company’s own history, Jane Saunders founded the original The Body Shop in Berkeley in 1970, using botanicals and natural ingredients in response to the city’s counterculture. In a 2015 CaFleureBon profile, her daughter Kathy Saunders gives the same story: her mother started the business at the age of 50, with $750, as a storefront in Berkeley in the 1970s. Kathy and her sister Ann Saunders Gordon run the company today.

In the same interview Kathy Saunders calls Rain “a fantasy, floral musk” and says it was the company’s first signature fragrance, still a top seller. The company’s history lists Rain among its enduring signature scents, with China Rain, China Musk and Pikake.

Neither the company nor Fragrantica gives a launch year or names a perfumer.

The composition

Fragrantica and the product description used by TerraNova’s stockists name the same three materials.

Fragrantica adds green notes and classifies Rain as a floral green fragrance. The stockist description calls it “a crystalline scent derived from nature itself,” with “green clover, lily of the valley and sheer musk.” The name describes a mood rather than a note: none of the sources lists a watery or ozonic material.

Why it matters

Rain comes out of the 1970s Berkeley body-shop scene rather than the department-store fragrance industry. Kathy Saunders describes the company’s early customers as Berkeley “free spirits” who wanted a scent they could not buy from mass-produced brands.

It has also lasted. Readers commenting on the 2015 CaFleureBon profile remember buying Rain as teenagers, and the company still sells it decades later. On this site it appears in the fragrance notes for Sela Ward, and it makes an instructive contrast with Demeter Rain, which interprets the same word as a watery cologne.

Reformulation and editions

Rain is sold as a roll-on perfume essence, a 0.33 fl oz oil in stockists’ listings, and the company has also offered it in body lotion and body wash, as in a 2015 gift set described by CaFleureBon. No reformulation history has been published.

Wearing it today

As an oil, Rain sits close to the skin and suits people who want a scent that others notice only up close. Apply it to pulse points and reapply during the day.

One longtime wearer, commenting on the CaFleureBon profile, says no two people wearing Rain smell quite the same, so try it on your own skin before buying.

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Sources