I was going to start this review by saying that despite having studied French literature in college, my only experience with Baudelaire was with his poem Les Fleurs du Mal, but then I Googled…
Ormonde Elixir is 45% Ormonde Woman, 45% Ormonde Man, and 10% oud oil. I’m not mad at those percentages. The oud smells like the real deal has been used, and in more than holistic…
I blame my workload for a lot of life stuff that just doesn’t get done, including, inter alia, regular exercise, parenting that extends to more than rubbing their little heads fondly as I pass…
For all that vetiver famously possesses an olfactory range stretching between hazelnut, roses, and earth, it is always unmistakably ‘vetiver’ in the same way that patchouli is always patchouli. You’ll notice, therefore, that descriptions…
Based on my sampling of three perfumes from the Argentinian brand Frassaï, I can say that this is exactly the kind of thing that one hopes to see from modern niche perfumery…
The indie perfume brand Neandertal boasts some of the most achingly cool bottles I’ve ever seen, one of the hottest talents on the indie perfumery scene (Euan McCall), and several glowing Luca Turin reviews…
Iris Perle Username checks out. In its totality, Iris Perle is an opalescent soap bubble of freshly peeled mandarin over soapy-waxy-fatty mimosa clasped in a child’s slightly sweaty paw, but studied closely…
Vanille Havane Vanille Havane is an undeniably good smell. How could it not be? It is basically a Greatest Hits tour of some of the most feelgood smells in modern niche…
There are three types of tuberose fragrance and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Category I is Photorealistic Tuberose, which is where you find the dewy ‘ripped from nature’ takes like Carnal Flower (Malle),…
I keep trying to sum up Spell 125 by Papillon Artisan Perfumes for myself in one of those snappy two-liners that Luca Turin excels in, but it is a testament to the perfume’s shape-shifty-ness…
Gold is the most challenging of the gifts of the three Magi, of course, given that, unlike myrrh and frankincense, it is not a fragrant material in and of itself. I could write about…
Each of the gifts of the three Magi carried a special symbolic meaning – gold representing kingship, myrrh foreshadowing the death of Jesus (myrrh being commonly used as an embalming and purifying ointment in…
Myrrh is the sulky emo teenager of the resin family. From soapy to waxy to mushroomy to medicinal, let's do a deep dive on this most recalcitrant of resins. …
Mining the same marshmallow-meets-campfire vein as By the Fireplace by Maison Martin Margiela, albeit only about a hundred times more pleasant and natural-smelling, Blackmail captures that exciting feeling of anticipation your tummy gets at…
Copper Skies Sometimes you want a silky pâté that rolls around velvetily in your mouth for a few seconds before dissolving into perfumed air, and sometimes you want the thick, meaty savor of a…
Kintsugi by Masque Milano smells the way those mysterious salted fruits and chutneys in an Asian restaurant taste – perfumey, bitter, and dark in a way that sucks all the moisture out of your…
The challenge for any reviewer in reviewing the Areej Le Doré releases is that (a) either you’re late and the perfumes you’re writing about are no longer available to buy, or (b) you’re on…
What a beautiful and refreshingly to-the-point fragrance. In the tinderbox of nowtimes where the fuse is short and the flashpoint just a meter downwind of someone having a bad day on Twitter, Hongkong Oolong…
A common assumption in evaluating all-natural fragrances – thanks in large part to the Cult of Raw Materials that has sprung up around top-tier artisanal, distill-it-yourself houses such as Bortnikoff and Areej Le Doré…
The more I wear Sticky Fingers by Francesca Bianchi, the more I’m convinced it is the Bengale Rouge of the Bianchi line, by which I mean a deliciously thicc n’ fuzzy oriental that’s characterful…
Neither of these 2016 Ormonde Jayne releases – Jardin d’Ombre and Ambre Royal – are my kind of thing, even though there are interesting and even beautiful moments in both of them. But I’m…
As you might have guessed from my recent series of posts, I am a big fan of the house of Ormonde Jayne. After having invested in several full bottles and having worked my way…
Ormonde Jayne set out its mission and values in its original core collection, and to this day, it remains the standard bearer for the brand. I’ve written about some of the perfumes in the…
The topnotes of Serge Lutens Serge Noire‘s smoky, dried fruit incense draw me in every single Goddamn time, like a mermaid’s song. And then I am dashed cruelly against the rocks that are this…
Rose Gold Rose Gold opens with a fiercely fresh green rose that briefly hints at the rose in Ta’if before folding its lemon-rind-and-black-pepper topnotes into the folds of a richer, pulpier rose that smells…
Ormonde Jayne Four Corners of the World collection upped the ante on the already amazing core line, exploring key raw materials drawn from, well, the four corners of the earth: oud from India, tobacco…
Ormonde Jayne is a brand that I turn to for sophistication and polish. I'm looking past the core collection of original releases and asking: what did Linda do next? Part I is on the…
Quasi Un’Absurdia by Chris Rusak is a rare joy. In the modern hodge podge of brutal woody ambers and syrupy eau-de-department-store florals, instances of classical beauty are few and far between. So a minute…
I’m fascinated by the individuality of the models at play in the indie perfume sector. Some houses, like Diane St. Clair and Papillon work slowly, releasing an average of one perfume a year (if…
Mxxx. by Eris Parfums is an almost embarrassingly sexual scent – the result, I imagine, of an experiment to cross breed the silvery, driftwood aroma of a far-off beach bonfire with the boudoir-ish scent…
I don’t know how to say this without sounding condescending, but one sniff of Eve and Pandora, the new duo of perfumes from Diane St. Clair, is enough to tell that there has been…
Although I’ve always worn make-up, my reasons for doing so have varied dramatically over the years. As a teenager, my first and only concern was to make my face into a blank mask to…
Fallintostars by Strangelove NYC is clever because it pairs the 15th century smell of Hindi oud – the dank, rotting, wet wood smell of animal hides piled high in a medieval dungeon – with…
Douleur! by Bogue, a collaboration between Freddie Albrighton, a tattoo artist and erstwhile perfume blogger, and Antonio Gardoni, the beloved beardie of Bogue Profumo, has already garnered quite a bit of reaction on the…
Have you ever been walking along the street and suddenly feel so good that you burst into a run? Zoologist Bee is that for me – a burst of positivity that settles on you…
Hiram Green Voyage 2019, huh. I remember little of the original Voyage other than (a) I liked it a lot – or at least enough to spend €25 on obtaining a precious 5ml decant,…
The amount of depravity Francesca Bianchi subjects orris root to, I don’t know to be scared of meeting her in a dark alley – or take her out for an Aperol Spritz. People are…
I used to think that fragrances were like books, in that the more you experienced, the more your mental library expanded. But that’s not true. When I read a new book, the bookshelves in…
It’s been a while since I last wrote about Abdullah’s work at Mellifluence, which was about his amazing Tsuga Musk mukhallat featured in my Basenotes article, ‘The Murky Matter of Musk‘ (1 September, 2017). …