Gris Charnel is a really pleasant, smooth woody tea fragrance with just enough darkness to make it feel cozy and autumnal. Though initially I believed it to be too similar to Remember Me by Jovoy to warrant my attention, I’ve come to see it as far less lactonic/gourmand/yummy than the Jovoy, the lumbar-yardy sandalwood in the basenotes providing a surprisingly gritty chew to the otherwise clear, sweet nuances of the cardamom and black tea accords.
Truth be told, Gris Charnel could also be seen as the gentle daytime precursor to the far more aromatic, but essentially similarly aromatic, plummy-figgy darkness of Thé Noir by Le Labo. I think that what they both have in common – apart from some shared notes – is an incredibly inviting ‘come hither’ air that feels seductive without running into predatory or try-hard territory.
Compared to both the Le Labo and the Jovoy, however, Gris Charnel feels quite designer-ish. The clearly off-the-shelf sandalwood synths (javanol or ebanol) contribute a bit to that impression. But mostly I think it’s because the cardamom note here is presented in its least confrontational guise, meaning less piercingly aromatic, citric, and coffee-ish than in, say, Starlight (XerJoff) or Abu Dhabi (Memo) and more like a cup of chai diluted with a ton of hot milk, or a particularly doughy version of the Swedish cardamom bun. The cardamom is creamily rather than pungently piquant here, in other words, and goes quite a long way to explaining why it’s such a popular fragrance. It’s the Starbucks version of exotic – a frequent player in the seasonal effluvia of Dark Academia-themed Tik Toks.
Mentally, I tend to classify Gris Charnel in the same group with scents like Jo Malone’s Myrrh & Tonka and Dior Addict, meaning things that are both fresh and dark, creamy and piquant, and almost commercially smooth. The distinctiveness of the shape of fig or myrrh or or cardamom or even orange blossom is worn away to such a thin membrane that all you taste is that utterly pleasant, gently spiced creaminess that you’re told by the brand to expect. Donna Karan did this sort of stuff first of course, with Wenge and Chaos and their ilk, but with these long out of production, nobody born in a century beginning with ‘2’ would know that.
I like Gris Charnel a lot, and though I think Liam Grey by Lattafa does a creditable job of knocking it off, once my teenage son had ‘lost’ my bottle of Liam Grey at school (I suspect he traded it for something else), I was happy to replace it with a travel size of the real deal. It’s not a masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination, or even that novel, but it falls into that category of ‘pleasantly meh’ perfumes that are just so enjoyable to wear that I can easily see myself buying another travel size once this one runs out.
Cover Image: Photo by Brandee Taylor on Unsplash
