These are my favourite perfumes, numbers 26 through to 50. The list may change slightly over the years to come, but given that the fragrances that I feel have come to define me are ones that have remained firm favourites of mine over almost twelve years of collecting (and curation), I don’t anticipate too much movement.
No. 26. Santal de Mysore (Serge Lutens)
Full review here. Santal de Mysore is my ne-plus-ultra of sandalwood soli-woods still available on today’s market (though the sadly discontinued Santal Nabataea runs a very close second, and I am also faithful to my two bottles of vintage Sandalo by Etro). What I value most about it is its dichotomy. It is wet and dry simultaneously, and intensely so. Santal de Mysore smells like real Mysore sandalwood from the nozzle. But on the skin, this impression disappears, as the big building blocks of flavours and spices jostle each other for position. Drawing your nose back from your arm, the clumps of spice and wood magically coalesce into a true Mysore aroma – deep brown, buttery, arid, resinous. Salted butter dried and made into a red dust. Put your nose back to that spot on your wrist, and the Mysore impression falls apart again. This is a fragrance that plays peek-a-boo with its wearer, and it is mesmerizing.
No. 27. Marescialla (Santa Maria Novella)
Full review here. Dirty mace and clove over a dry, herbaceous patchouli that makes my skin smell like I’ve just scrubbed it with carbolic soap. Weird, medicinal, Italian apothecary chic at its best. This is the perfume that taught me that I don’t have to smell pretty to smell good.
No. 28. Azemour les Orangers (Parfum d’Empire)
Freshly plucked and peeled oranges, pith and all, mingling with the woody, lichen-y scent of the orange grove from whence it came. I love that the orange is peel-like rather than OJ-adjacent, which of course adds to the bitter chypre-like feel of the scent. It is made even more brilliant by the contrast with the ashen moss notes in the base. Azemour les Orangers smells dark green and orange to me, the saturated, jewel-like colours of an oil painting. I wear it most in winter, when I need a vitamin C shot to the arm to see me through the gloom of an entire day without petering off into nothing or losing any of its naturalness of feel.
No. 29. Ella (Arquiste)
Full review here. The greatest part of Ella’s attraction, for me, is in its opening, when a rotting plum-rose is dropped like a bomb into a pile of mouldy tobacco leaves. This is a perfume that arrives already broken-in when it touches the wrist, blooming like the moist, grubby under-shirt aura of skin and 12-hour-old perfume. A veil of murky, grey-green galbanum casts long shadows under the fruit and flowers, outlining them with ash but no smoke. Filtering through everything is jasmine, a steady pulse of airy, honeyed sourness that is half-Hedione, half sambac with its under-the-wristwatch aroma. The sweet and salty parts of the equation come from a sweet, powdery honey, which when combined with the greener herbal notes smell like linden blossom tea, a note that connects Ella to both Vero Profumo’s Naja as well as to the vintage, made in Italy version of Dolce & Gabbana for Men.
No. 30. 34 Boulevard Saint Germain (Diptyque)
God, how I love the camphoric, balsamic quality of this scent. Though essentially a whistlestop tour of Diptyque’s Greatest Hits – featuring the tart berries and vivid ‘snapped stem’ greenery of L’Ombre Dans L’Eau, the milky green fig leaf of Philosykos, the clove-scented opoponax heart of Eau Lente, and even a faintly watery tuberose note that hints at Do Son – 34 Boulevard St. Germain never feels like anything less than its own creation. Nestling between a urinous grapefruit and a soft pink rose, these green and red notes glow like rubies against the brownish backdrop of balmy, lavender-inflected cedar. It possesses an energizing sourness that really quenches my thirst for something zesty and alive-feeling when the charm of heady winter ambers has paled.
No. 31. Douce Amère (Serge Lutens)
Douce Amère is a subtle scent that reveals different layers over the course of a day – spearmint, hazelnuts, smoke, Ouzo, cinnamon, liquorice root, green leaves – all ending in a salted lily cream as unctuous as a bowl of ice cream. When I wear it, I tie myself into knots trying to figure out whether it’s a bitter tonic for the liver or a creamy, bready, vanilla-soaked gourmand. Either way, its shifting minty-anisic gauze overlay makes it something I reach for when I need to settle my mind (or stomach).
No. 32. Castaňa (Cloon Keen Atelier)
A simple thing really – vetiver, mimosa, powdered sugar – but so suggestive of the soft, mealy deliciousness of roasted chestnuts floating on cold Roman air that it never fails to transport me. Castaňa is the perfect antidote to the loud, thick sweetness of modern perfumes. Ephemeral, almost maddeningly so, it demands (gently) that you pause and lean in to hear what it is saying. The older I get, the more I understand that two thirds of the magic spell cast by perfumes like Castaňa, Osmanthe Yunnan, and Bois d’Armenie is embedded in their quietness, so we should approach them with much the same attentiveness as we might the art of listening to incense (monkō).
No. 33. Absolue Pour Le Soir (Maison Francis Kurkdjian)
Probably the only amber in existence that manages to transcend the straight jacket of its own genre, Absolue Pour Le Soir probes the soft tissue of resins to find the winey, honeyed funk of the small furred animal encapsulated in a nugget of fossilized amber. At first, it smells almost unbearably acrid, like walking under a bridge at night and realizing that the town drunk has left his mark. But the sharp foulness loosens up quickly to reveal the scent of burning incense and the rich, pounding thrum of benzoin and honey crystals. Thickening and fatting up this accord is a swaddling blanket of musks, smoke, animal pelt and silky, voluminous balsams. It’s an almost 3D experience, and one I return to when I want to remember how it feels to be shaken to one’s core by something as outwardly straightforward as perfume.
No. 34. 31 Rue Cambon (Chanel)
I didn’t always love this, but 31 Rue Cambon has grown on me to the extent that I cannot imagine being without it (I have finished one half of a 200ml bottle received in a split and have another one waiting in the wings). It feels truly like a chypre to me, a rousingly sour bergamot parting its folds to reveal a an icy, almost bitter iris, warmed and softened by a peachy floral labdanum heart, and backed by an elegant floral patchouli drydown that apes the velvety dryness of moss. It is fuzzy and abstract in the grand Chanel tradition, which is why I found it difficult to parse, initially. When I wear 31 Rue Cambon now, however, I experience it both emotionally and immersively. It feels like a crystal glass of champagne held up to a mirror in a candlelit ballroom, infracting shards of light that dance on the velvet shadows lurking at the edges.
No. 35. Nawab al Oudh (Ormonde Jayne)
Describing what Nawab of Oudh smells like is like trying to catch butterflies with a teaspoon. It has that gauzy, dizzying abstraction characteristic of so many Ormonde Jayne standouts like Black Gold and Rose Gold, and features – as far as I can tell – peppery spice, juicy mandarin, champagne-like aldehydes, roses, sandalwood, and a mass of creamy floral notes. But I’m not sure any notes list adequately conveys the fierce joy of this scent. Better to say instead that this perfume gives you that Saturday morning feeling of good things to come – a crisply folded newspaper, a fresh pot of coffee, warm bread rolls, cold Irish butter, and a day of leisure stretching out in front of you like a cat. It smells like sunshine in a loved one’s hair and a just-cancelled meeting.
No. 36. Ambre 114 (Histoires de Parfums)
I never understood what Luca Turin meant when he said there was a hole in this fragrance where the amber should be, until I took a decant of this with me to Nairobi. It leaked, smearing the label, so was unable to remember what it was, and for one whole day I wore it without knowing what it was. It was then I understood that Ambre 114 smells more like a gently spiced sandalwood ‘cream’ than an amber. It is soft, nutmeggy, and muskily woody, with the normally lusty character of benzoin or labdanum restrained and pinned to the shadows. A blond wood dusted lightly with baby powder, herbes de Provence, and pudding spice. Most ambers are extremely rich and resiny, sating my palate so quickly that I feel over-stimulated. Though I have finished a bottle of Ambre Sultan, own both Ambre Russe and Mitzah, and used to own Amber Absolute, Ambre 114 is my favourite because it is not really amber at all.
No. 37. L’Ombre Fauve (Pierre Guillaume)
In the – possibly fetishistic – subgenre of ‘human fur’ fragrances, the frontrunners being Musc Ravaguer (Malle), Patchouli Boheme (LM Parfums), and Carnicure (Marlou), L’Ombre Fauve is my favourite. Its relatively simple composition – amber, musk, patchouli, and incense – transcends the sum of its parts to become a port manteau of all of the ordinary and grotesque little intimacies of domestic life. The opening, pleasantly musty, recalls the sourish tang of damp laundry left to moulder overnight in the laundry basket. The salty edge to the powdery amber is reminiscent of the nape of a beloved husband’s neck at night, skin that has just taken on the necessary staleness of a long day and is somehow all the sweeter for it. There is also something of the tang of breast milk that has escaped a baby’s satisfied mouth and coagulated in the folds of her neck. And of course, it also famously smells like the belly fur of a well-loved of the family cat. Smeary and smutty in all the right ways.
No. 38. Dzing! (L’Artisan Parfumeur)
There is an abstraction to Dzing!, a sort of sweet, musky haze that rearranges the furniture of the scent each time, rendering the familiar unfamiliar. Sometimes Dzing! wears as a sweet, bready musk with a tinge of caramel apples; other times, it smells of saddle soap and soft horse shit. On occasion, I smell grimy skin trapped under a rubber watch strap, as well as Rich Tea biscuits, soggy cardboard, and Communion wafers. If books are themselves an amalgamation of complex, abstract aromas and molecules, then Dzing! is that in scent form. Like a book, Dzing! is predominantly sweet and vanillic (biscuity), but there is the unmistakable whiff of something that reminds you of its ruder animal origins – the faecal smell of just cured leather bindings, perhaps, or the moistly grimy finger imprints of previous readers. Delicious, with all its second-hand intimacy that it implies.
No. 39. Cuir Cannage (Dior Privée)
Opening with a strawberry Hubba Bubba note wrapped in a plush leather accord that appears to be fashioned 20% out of gasoline (that rooty petroline iris) and 80% out of a thick carpet of musks and resins, I am firmly of the camp that Cuir Cannage leans far more towards Knize Ten or vintage Tabac Blond parfum (or even L’Heure Bleue) than it does Cuir de Russie (Chanel). This is so rich, sweet, and medicinal that I visualise it swelling and rolling off my skin in waves. Many poo-poo this as a Cuir Mauresque (Serge Lutens) knock-off, but I own both, and while there are similarities, I far prefer the Dior. Cuir Mauresque is angular and difficult in that ‘high art’ manner of older Serge Lutens – Cuir Cannage is a deeply slutty, red-brown amber performing in full leather drag.
No. 40. Onda (Vero Kern)
Not for the uninitiated, which, for a long time, included me. The mealy honey-vetiver dankness of Onda gives a little freshly cleaned bathroom stall, but in an unctuous way that also makes me think of brown velvet and the dull glow of Tiffany lamps. Salty, wet, and a bit furry, it is a perfume that smells of feral cats in a den hidden in the undergrowth, albeit a world removed from the agrestic ‘smells’ turned out by indie perfumers to simulate an environment or an animal that lives there. Onda is a wild-reared, 100% grass-fed, organic experience that just happens to be chypre-shaped. There is no sense of it having been born, just of it arriving in the world fully formed – a creature with native intelligence.
No. 41. Songes (Annick Goutal)
Songes is one of the biggest white or yellow florals in existence, but oddly, practically the only one of its type that doesn’t make me nauseous. I think this is because the naturally sharp, jutting nature of Songes’ mixed bouquet of ylang, jasmine, tiaré, and frangipani is softened by, and partially subsumed into, a creamy sandalwood. A shiny-dirty-plasticky jasmine is the main player in the EDT, while a banana-ish ylang dominates in the EDP, with tons of creamy, animalic musks fleshing out the landing. Both versions are supremely graceful and classically beautiful, but only the EDP smells as cuminy as a woman’s inner thigh. The addition of billowing, cumulus-sized white musks to the sandalwood and vanilla of the EDP has the effect of blowing hotly on the cumin, amplifying it to a point that makes me blush.
No. 42. 1969 Parfum de Revolte (Histoires de Parfums)
I love 1969 Parfum de Revolte because it gives me both the low-rent pleasure of a Tocade-style rose-vanilla accord and a darker, more adult finish that elevates it. It opens with a lurid peach note that seems to vibrate and expand on the skin until you feel like you are walking around in an ice-cream sundae (one that also features liberal helpings of vinyl and boiled sweets). Once the shock and awe of the creamy fruit-splosion dies down, a duskier mid-section of vanilla arrives, infused with the green, dishwater-soap of cardamom pods and the woodier tint of coffee beans. The base is a subtle musk and patchouli mixture, which, when mated with the vanilla, creates a creamy chocolate accord that brings it close in feel to Tom Ford’s wonderful but far more serious or formal Noir de Noir.
No. 43. Musk (Lorenzo Villoresi)
Past the rosy-minty slap of the geranium leaf, Musk – or Muschio – is a surprisingly creamy rose-musk-sandal affair not a million miles away from Safran Troublant by L’Artisan Parfumeur, another desert island favourite of mine. Tremendously diffusive and enveloping, it is one of those rare scents that manages to be sharp and mellow at the same time, thus straddling the Great Gender divide with ease. Yes, it feels like rose custard, but at the same time, it also smells like crushed herbs, that arid-umami Villoresi sandalwood, and a clean, woody musk. It is one of my favourite scents of all time, let alone a rose or a musk one, and among one of my most worn in 2019, when I was living in Rome.
No. 44. Lord of Misrule (Lush)
If you told me this is what Outer Space smells like, I’d believe you. There are two layers to Lord of Misrule. The first, that minty-mineralic ‘bath bomb’ dust that impregnates every available air particle to the point you feel a little ‘choked out’. The second, a wet, syrupy-sweet accord that smells a little like the Coca Cola syrup you mix with seltzer in a Soda Stream. The greyish fuzz of minerals and space dust eventually burns off, revealing a sumptuous patchouli amber so rich you can feel it weighing down your skin. Essentially, in marrying a sexy ice-creamy amber-vanilla tandem to a headshoppy patchouli, Lush has recreated the more expensive feel of niche vanillambers, like Ani (Nishane) or Ambre Extrême (L’Artisan Parfumeur) but charges you a mere €35 for the pleasure. As long as Lush makes Lord of Misrule, I will be buying it.
No. 45. Dune (Dior)
Dune is abstract and therefore difficult to parse, but it appears to be structured around a fuzzy, sandy-textured amber shot through with peachy aldehydes and faintly bitter undercurrents of anise, moss, and citrus fruit. And though Ormonde Jayne’s Tolu and Parfums MDCI’s Promesse de l’Aube both possess something of its grainy-salty-floral character, Dune remains one of the most distinctive scents on the market. To my nose, it smells like a sweet oriental rubbed into a masculine aftershave, something woody and harsh like Brut. Which is probably why it works.
No. 46. Le Pavillon d’Or (Dusita Parfums)
Full review here. I love Le Pavillon d’Or because it shows that a perfume can be aromatic and femme. Its golden, gauzy veil of powderiness softens the hard edges of the herbs. This is a fragrance that carries the green-gold-lilac duskiness of post-harvest meadows and field margins and hedgerows inside of it. There is an illusion of galbanum minus the bitterness, or of vetiver without its dankness. The main note is a minty fig leaf, coated with an overlay of what smells to me like alfalfa grass notes. It is watery and powdery at the same time. A very atmospheric scent – painterly almost – with a touch of melancholy fluted around the edges.
No. 47. Le Maroc Pour Elle (Tauer Perfumes)
Full review here. The least ‘Andy Tauer’ Andy Tauer perfume ever. It has nothing of the crystalline, hot-arid feel that runs through his other work like a watermark. Andy Tauer perfumes are passionate, but also highly curated. You get the impression that every nuance is fine-tuned with the precision of a Swiss clock. Le Maroc Pour Elle is not Swiss clock-precise. It is messy as hell, like a five year old child who’s smeared her mother’s red lipstick all over her mouth. It smells unburned incense cones, amber cubes, floor disinfectant, indolic jasmine, antiseptic lavender, shoe polish, mandarin oranges, gasoline, gooey amber, rubber, candy, tuberose, leather, orange blossoms, and, sometimes the dry, sweet smell of a paper grocery bag. It’s a bit too much and sometimes it smells like antibiotic syrup for kids and I can’t wear it often. But when the craving hits, there nothing like it.
No. 48. Fils de Dieu (État Libre d’Orange)
The best smell in the world – apart from that of a baby’s head, hot bread, or a freshly lit cigarette – is the smell of a good Thai curry being prepared in your kitchen. The aromas of crushed lemongrass stalks, coriander leaves and stalks, chilies, lime juice, and steamy basmati rice are my idea of a cheap, legal high. I have gone through two bottles of this. Fils de Dieu triggers all the right responses in my salivary glands – hot, sour, aromatic, fresh – while layering the creamy rice mouthfeel of a pudding at the end, to sweeten the mouth. Though this last bit is, technically speaking, what makes Fils de Dieu a gourmand, I experience it as an aromatic, like Shalimar if it came in a Tom Yum soup flavour.
No. 49. Comme des Garçons Parfum (Comme des Garçons)
That I find this so wearable that I’m on my second bottle is a surprise even to me. Though it is positively classical in comparison to other Comme des Garçons scents, this is not the kind of thing you casually splash on and go about your merry way. No, with its mulling spices so pungent you fear they will burn through three layers of skin, the Parfum is something you have to really mean. Despite its sharp and unlovely start, Comme des Garçons Parfum turns out to be a warm and sturdy sandalwood all dressed up for Christmas in an inch thick layer of pepper, clove, nutmeg, and cardamom. The drydown is dominated by a beautiful ‘old honey’ accord, slightly animalic and waxen, threaded with the smoke from a Shoyeido incense stick, heavy with benzoin, cloves, and aloeswood. It is rich, slightly incense-woody, and not at all sweet. In fact, there may even be a distant kinship to Absolue Pour Le Soir, above.
No. 50. Sideris by Maria Candida Gentile
If Tinkerbell and the Archangel Gabriel got together to make a perfume, Sideris is what they would come up with. Maria Candida Gentile took the heaviest and stickiest substances in perfumery – French labdanum, frankincense, myrrh, beeswax – and infused the whole thing with light and air. A gentle shake of the spice jar – pepper and ginger – add a sprightly, nose-tingling effect. In a genre crowded with soaring, celestial efforts, Sideris distinguishes itself as something scaled to domestic proportions. It is a quiet moment of reflection over a cup of tea. It is the private rolling out of a prayer mat in your bedroom as dawn approaches. You can tell that a woman made this. I put Sideris on, and no matter what kind of bad day I am having, I feel like I am floating around in my own personal cloud of magic fairy dust.
Cover Image: AI-generated.
