#1 Nota di Viaggio (Rites de Passage)
The opening is pure Italian apothecary chic – a veritable cacophony of brackish herbs, aged citrus, and homemade toothpaste underscored by a streak of medicated foot powder and ye olde throat pastilles. Not unpleasant per se, but a jumbled up wall of smell that I associate with many of the openings of Italian artisanal perfumery, like Mem and Noun from Bogue, Lafeogrigio or Ladamo by O’Driu, or the more aromatic scents of Annette Neuffer (not Italian, but the style is similar).
Once this rather harsh, resinous basil-ade dies back, however, the rest of the scent is a wonderful chiaroscuro featuring a creamy, vegetal patchouli-vetiver accord, made more oily and bitter with a heady dose of rosewood – velvety, lush, dark – shot through with a bright floral sherbet of ylang and other flowers. The contrast between the salubrious, serious basenotes that tilt towards the bowels of the earth and the effervescent, slightly ‘Love Hearts’-ish accord is delightful. It’s deep, aromatic and soulful, but at the same time, filled with slivers of dancing light. I am determined to buy my husband a bottle of this for his next birthday.
#2 Nota di Viaggio (Shukran)
This is probably the most immediately arresting of the trio. It smells so strongly of spearmint and citrus soap in the beginning that I feel slightly sick but also like I’m just out of the shower. This feeling is confusing to me, in that I like its unusual freshness but dislike when the line between perfumery and toothpaste is crossed so decisively, and all within the first few moments. I begin to like this accord better once the glare on the mint softens a bit, allowing me to smell the other green, aromatic notes, like lemongrass and the gentler, honeyed hay-like tones of the chamomile.
I fool myself into thinking that this is heading in a Moroccan mint tea direction when suddenly, a boldly spiced tobacco leaf note swims into view, and from then on, I smell nothing but. The tobacco accent is light, untoasted, blond almost, but also so tightly threaded with clove, cinnamon, and star anise that it smells like a very unsweet gingerbread – a pain d’epices they might serve in a medieval monastery, where honey or dried fruits are considered a mortal sin and kept far away from the kitchen. If you’ve ever smelled Tan d’Epices by Andree Putman, then this is similar – indeed, so much so that I would hazard a guess that the same material has been used here, or the tobacco leaf-spice accord built out in the same way.
But before I can start fully warming up to #2, it is gone. Poof! And I mention that because performance beyond a four hour window is important to some. On the other hand, if you love Eau d’Hadrien by Annick Goutal or Eau d’Orange Verte by Hermes, for example, and treat them for what they really are – a ‘parfum du matin’ until you put on something more serious later on in the day – then #2 Nota di Viaggio (Shukran) could be a worthy addition to your wardrobe. It is unusual in that it takes extreme freshness in a thoroughly different direction, with mint and spicy blond tobacco substituting for the more standard citrus and moss.
#3 Nota di Viaggio (Ciavuru d’Amuri)
Something about this perfume is so incredibly nostalgic to me that I am not sure if I can review it objectively. Perhaps it is because it smells green, aromatic, and gently powdered to begin with, making me think of mimosa or Cassie flower, as well as the figs my Montenegrin mother in law picks from her tree before drying them and rolling them in a mixture of cornstarch and powdered sugar. Or perhaps it is because there is a ylang material in there that smells like the slightly dry, smoky leather accent in Cuir de Russie or the post-2015 Mitsouko. Whatever it is, it brings me right back to when I lived in the Mediterranean (Sicily, Montenegro), and, more than a place, to a time in my life when I was beginning to really discover perfume (or really great perfume), with that starchy ylang-mimosa like material acting as my own personal Proustian madeleine.
Objectively speaking, though, what I think makes this perfume great is that the perfumer connects the scent of ripe figs and the coarse, fruity creaminess of ylang via a note of rubber. Fig perfumes can be woody and coconutty (Philosykos) or astringent and pissy-fresh (Ninfeo Mio) but if you focus intently enough, you will notice that they are always, always slightly rubbery underneath the sweet, green freshness. A milky, sappy kind of rubber. The fig in #3 is far less green, woody, or coconutty than other examples, in that it smells warm and closely textured like the flesh inside the fruit, and as clean like a fig note in a clarifying shampoo. But there is a lingering undercurrent – subtle but present – of a gentle rubber, dusted with a fine white powder of unknown origin.
This accent connects so seamlessly with the grapey, fuel-y rubbery-ness of that ylang that you hardly notice that the core note has shifted from fig to ylang, from fruit to flower. I think it’s because these notes, that we think of as creamy or liquid, are quite dry here, drained of their essential humidity as the scent progresses. But there’s more to this scent than this skillful transition. These core accords are bathed in this gentle, herbal aura that is half sugared aniseed, and half resin dust – the kind of resins that have a cleansing, antiseptic character, like elemi or pine sap. #3 is not too much of one thing or the other, in fact, its defining character being that of having no fixed character at all. This is an ethereal changeling that makes you chase it down one leg of a maze and then another, smelling of completely different things from one wear to the next. Out of all the Nota di Viaggio series, #3 is the one that has charmed me the most.
Source of Samples: I purchased my Meo Fusciuni sample set from the Italian retailer, 50 ML, here.
Cover Image: Photo by Federico Burgalassi on Unsplash
