Monthly Archives

April 2023

Amber Aromatic Hay Honey Immortelle Independent Perfumery Oakmoss Review Spice Tobacco

Ladamo by O’driu: A Review

26th April 2023

 

Ladamo by O’driu smells like a Christmas craft store – scads of thick, velvety dirt, fallen apples, mulled wine, grated ginger root, the whole nine yards – but without the nasty chemical edge of the candle or stock oils that many American indies (BPAL, Possets, Alkemia, etc.) tend to rely on to create that type of vibe.  It could be because Angelo Pregoni uses a ton of naturals, especially immortelle, to do the heavy lifting.  But I’d bet that Pregoni’s famously kooky (and largely impenetrable to me) artistic sensibility plays a large part in it.  

 

Some reviews point out that that Ladamo is basically an immortelle soliflore, but I disagree that that’s the case, at least at first.  I mean, yes, you certainly get that bronzed, curried maple syrup vibe that accompanies immortelle wherever it goes, but the mossy dampness of the soil tincture, the watery (almost aquatic) magnolia, the metallic ginger-tobacco combo, and the smoky licorice note build it all out into something far more complex than is suggestible by one material alone.

 

The upshot is that Ladamo smells of all the brown, good-smelling things of autumn – root cellars, apple rot, and the hummus of the forest floor – mulched down into one compact but vibrant layer.  An amber this may be, but spiritually, Ladamo shares a lot of ground with Comme des Garcons’ Patchouli, and artistically, it is what Foxcroft by Solstice Scents wishes it could be when it grows up and taps into a bigger budget.    

 

The first half of Ladamo is borderline intoxicating to me.  Boozy, deep, sweet but also bitter and earthy, it sells me a fantasy of my former Goth self, striding through a forest full of wet, fallen yellow and brown leaves, wearing long leather boots, a riding crop, and way too much eyeliner.  But cool, you know?  The Gucci ‘hobo chic’ version of that, not the crunchy granola one hastily knocked up by your teenage self in your nearest health food (New Age) store.

 

Alas, as the day goes on, Ladamo loses it stamina and eventually becomes just another old codger shuffling forward on the crutches of that immortelle, because immortelle is always the last to die.  What was initially a complex, every-evolving smell doing an insane loop de loop from curry to brown sugar to maple syrup and golden leaf and hay and spice and back again, eventually whittles itself down to the faintly dusty, monochromatic booze sweat territory that most immortelle-heavy fragrances wind up in.  Still, worth it for the first half of the ride.

 

 

Source of sample:  Part of a sample swap with a friend.  Ladamo seems to be no longer available.

 

Cover Image:  Photo by freestocks on Unsplash

 

Amber Balsamic Carnation Leather Opoponox Review Rose Smoke Spice Spicy Floral Suede

En Avion by Caron: A Review

24th April 2023

 

 

There’s no mistaking En Avion as anything other than a Caron.  Everything comes from a well-established rulebook – flip to page ten for the stinging clove topnote of Poivre, the smoky, medicinal amber tilting its cap to leather, well, that’s Tabac Blond, and the piles of soft, mossy, licorice-and-rose-scented face power are lifted straight out of the drydown of Nuit de Noel.

 

But I have a sneaking fondness for En Avion above and beyond these other, possibly better regarded perfumes.  It could be because that first big whoosh of scent mixes the ridiculous with the sublime – expensive jasmine mingling with the tack of sun-warmed pleather, an opulent amber against the spicy shaving soap of opoponax, or a stick of clove-scented stick of rock or bubblegum (vaguely Brighton Beach-ish) dropped into an exquisitely ornate pot of pink face powder, the kind that the sales assistants retrieve wordlessly from beneath the counter the minute they catch sight of your American Express Centurion. 

 

Mostly, though, I love that it has this opaque texture halfway between smoke and cream, and no underlying structure to speak of.  En Avion gives you all its glory upfront and then does a slow, graceful fade out that simply lowers the saturation level with each passing minute.  Wearing it reminds me of being in one of those glider planes that drift so smoothly from one altitude to the next that you are unaware of your own descent until you suddenly see the ground.  In the end, all that remains is a pouf of spicy powder from a big red tin of Imperial Leather talc, which makes me wonder if that’s all it ever was to begin with.

 

Source of sample:  I bought a 15ml bottle of En Avion extrait from Parfumerie du Soleil d’Or in Lille in late 2015.  I should have bought more.  It is half gone and doesn’t seem to be available to buy anymore.  

 

Cover Image:  My own photo.  Please kindly do not reprint or reuse without my permission. 

Fruity Scents Iris Japanese Perfumery Review Suede The Discard Pile

Cittá di Kyoto by Santa Maria Novella: A Review

19th April 2023

 

 

I don’t mind the soft projection or poor longevity of Cittá di Kyoto, but what I can’t forgive is its vagueness.  It is mostly iris – that rooty, plaster-of-Paris iris material that Santa Maria Novella uses – over a blob of bitter, musky cedar, but it is dry enough for people to imagine they smell Japanese incense, sweet enough for people to think they smell fruit, and softly hawthorn-ish enough to make people think of Daim Blond.  

 

However, nothing ever tilts too firmly in one direction or another, so you get this diaphanous, blown out blur of root and wood and petal refuses to commit to even one of those ideas.  It flip flops between one thing and another so quickly that it could get elected to local government at least.  Some people find this charming.  I find it irritating, just as I do that dreamy, opaque way old Irish people have of answering every question with a half-laughed ‘ah sure, now, you know yourself’ when in fact, no, we don’t know, which is why we asked the question in the first place, you muppet.

 

I suspect that were it not for the evocative name or the inspiration, nobody would peg it as smelling particularly like Japanese incense or the woody air of an onsen in the forest, and so on and so forth.  Indeed, in the hands of any other brand, it might even be called – gasp – unfinished.  I bought a bottle, and not even blindly, simply because I had successfully mind-swindled myself into hearing the rustle of silk screens and bamboo mats.

 

But repeated wear just erodes the fantasy of Cittá di Kyoto a bit more each time.  I can squint my eyes all I like but no amount of mental acrobatics is going to turn that damp, bitter blob of cedar into the airy, silvery-green hinoki of my imagination, nor is that dry iris and hint of smoke ever going to transform into a wisp of coreless Shoyeido incense, which itself smells far more characterfully of cloves, benzoin, and aloeswood that anything suggested by this milquetoast of a perfume.  

 

Every spring since 2015, I have dutifully taken the frosted bottle out of the cupboard, dusted it off, and hoped that this would be the moment when it reveals its true beauty to me.  And in truth, I don’t hate it.  It is not a bad fragrance, objectively.  But life is just too short for such low-impact fragrance.   

 

 

Source of Sample:  Oh, don’t I just I’d just bought a sample.  I bought a whole bottle of the darned thing.

 

Cover Image:  Photo by Sorasak on Unsplash