Monthly Archives

August 2026

Coffee Green Floral Hay Herbal Immortelle Review Rose Sandalwood

Contre-Jour by Frederic Malle Editions de Parfums: A Review

27th August 2026

Man, this thing is so savoury and muscular. The arid, burnt-hay aspects of immortelle are really what are brought to the fore here, with none of the material’s usual maple syrup or curried wetness along for the ride. The opening is vegetal and green in a stock-cube kind of way that almost reads as a little oniony until a gorgeous Turkish rose moves in to pretty things up.

Well, I say pretty things up but that probably implies a dominant female energy that just isn’t here. What I really mean to say is that the rose hydrates and softens the throat-catchingly dry texture, adding a winey depth that is much needed beyond all that crisp sunny hay. Though the rose brings some pulp to the texture, and the end result is quite rich, I would call this a sinewy perfume rather than a jammy one. The coffee and sandalwood lend a bitterness I associated with toasted wood or spent coffee grounds – nothing gourmand about those notes at all. Everything here seems to pull in the same direction, and the result is a harmonious study in late-August copper, coffee, and burnt sienna colours.

I admire it and think it’s one of the most interesting fragrances I’ve smelled this year. However, I am not rushing out to buy it. For one, I think that two perfumes I already own, namely Afternoon of a Faun (État Libre d/Orange) and Santal Nabataea (Mona di Orio), come close to creating a similar effect – the first a pretty much note for note take on the rose-immortelle theme, the second a mirror of the rich coffee and sandalwood ‘desert-like’ effect I find in Contre-Jour. Even Beloved Woman by Amouage, another one I own and like, has a similarly musky-spicy rose-immortelle thing going on in the drydown. And, to be honest, if I were adding another arid immortelle to my collection, it would probably be Le Mat by Mendittorosa. All to say that my immortelle bases are well and truly covered, and that if you own any of the perfumes I’ve just mentioned, well, then yours probably are too.

The other thing that gives me pause is that sweaty, vegetal opening. I love immortelle for its range of nuances, from syrupy to spicy to hay and fenugreek tea and so on. But that the savoury ‘stock cube’ aspect is something I personally find difficult. It is as much a presence here in Contre-Jour as it is in Patchouli Luxe by Comme des Garcons, where the salt-and-pepper undertones of immortelle are accentuated by white pepper and a fenugreek-soy sauce accord that, while impressive, manages to turn my stomach a bit. However, if you don’t own any good immortelle perfumes, love savoury accords in perfumery, and are interested in the yin and yang balance of the traditionally masculine notes (hay, wood, spice) with more traditionally femme ones (rose, sandalwood), as interpreted by one of the best perfumers working today – Annick Ménardo – then Contre-Jour is probably a worthwhile investment.

Cover Image: Photo by Jeremy Thomas on Unsplash

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Amber Fruity Scents Vanilla White Floral

Future Memories by Byredo: A Review

25th August 2026

Future Memories by Byredo treads a path familiar to many of us watching the brand over the past few years, in that it gives you just enough wow factor in the first thirty minutes to frog-march you to the cash register before petering out into a synthy mess on your arm once the damage to your wallet has been done.

The opening truly is lovely, with a spiced fruit topnote (no berries to my nose) that recalls a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice mixed with cinnamon and cloves, but an upbeat summer version of what you might be imagining is a Christmassy affair. When this meets the vanilla, it softens into an orange blossom accord redolent of marshmallow fluff stirred through with a fruit cordial of sorts. It almost gets into Love, Don’t be Shy territory, but for a wheaten-biscuit texture pushing through the creaminess that sets it apart. Not a caramelised biscuit – nothing at all like Biscoff – but toasted and grainy, like the roughened surface of a McVities Digestive.

And honestly, it’s the different textures at play in Future Memories that make this really quite attractive at first. The vanilla is that plasticky doughball vanilla that I remember from Gucci Rush and that Gucci brown bottle perfume whose name I can never remember. If you partied in the nineties, you’ll remember this as the scent soundtrack of shiny-vinyl purses and wonder bras and unwise decisions made late at night in dodgy nightclubs.

But thirty minutes on and the only genuinely unwise decision you’ve made, you realise, is falling for the empty promise of this perfume’s hype train. Let me spare you the suspense – Future Memories unravels rather quickly into that cheap feeling, as-glassy-as-a-boiled-sweet amber base that has been consistently stuffed into so many perfumes since Grand Soir. To my nose, this type of ‘amber’ smells more like a room in which broccoli has been boiled than resins or anything even vaguely associated with nature. Hate to see it coming in an otherwise good perfume. It gives me a glimpse of a ghastly emptiness at the core of the perfume, eating away at any soul or imagination it may have initially possessed, like The Nothing from The Neverending Story.

Cover Image: Photo by Shayna Douglas on Unsplash

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