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Claire

Aromatic Herbal Review Tonka

Fève Délicieuse by Dior: A Review

2nd October 2023

 

I don’t require Fève Délicieuse by Dior to do anything more than it does, which is to step between me and this cold, cold world like a bodyguard.  In the late nineties, I worked for an American Ambassador in a hotly disputed piece of land straddling two parts of post-war Bosnia, and I quickly got used to his Close Protection Unit – made up of four surly and burly ex-British army officers (who grunted rather than spoke) – entering the room before he did, scanning for danger, barking at each other in code, and generally out Jason Stratham-ing Jason Stratham.  You get the picture.  When I visited the same Ambassador in DC a few years later, he told me that when he returned to America, it took him at least half a year to stop pausing before a door to let his CPU team case the joint.  “Oh for fuck’s sake, Bill, it’s only the laundry room,” his wife would have to remind him.  

 

Fève Délicieuse is built like a proverbial brick shithouse.  Its opening is a clenched fist of wet, bitter herbs (lavender, mint) twisting things into a black licorice shape, not a million miles away from the burnt coffee-herb opening of old Eau Noire (also Dior).  But this is just a teaser, presaging the scent’s main act of sour cherry jam stirred into an almond custard so thicc and muscular that your spoon is guaranteed to stand up in it.  The tonka bean here smells like vanilla if vanilla was less like ice cream and more like a dusky, tobacco-stained corduroy carpet.  It’s the ‘bit of rough’ to your parent’s definition of ‘a nice boy’.

 

Like the CPU guys, I admire its sheer endurance and unrelenting, brute strength.  This is a scent that wraps itself securely around your skin and beds down for the long haul, emanating wafts of burnt almond at frequent intervals to ward off harm.  But – and here’s the kicker – Fève Délicieuse is a scent with zero art and even less conversation.  Its whole point is its power.  It’s Charles Atlas dragging a 145,000-pound train up a track. 

 

But I figure it’s time for me to stop feeling guilty about owning perfumes whose sole function in my collection is to give me strength when I’m feeling vulnerable.  Because while Fève Délicieuse sure isn’t art, or perhaps even that good, its thick-fingered, tattooed hand at the small of my back is what pushes me gently forward when I hesitate.  And boy, does it give me comfort to know it’s there. 

 

 

Cover Image:  Photo by Alec Favale on Unsplash 

 

Source of Sample:  I purchased and swapped away a decant before buying one of those small 40ml bottles directly from Dior Italy in late 2019.

 

 

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Aromatic Chypre Herbal Oakmoss Patchouli Review Sandalwood Spice

Marescialla by Santa Maria Novella: Mad, bad, and dangerous to know

28th July 2023

 

Santa Maria Novella’s Marescialla is one of only three fragrances in the ‘interesting and ugly-beautiful but almost too brutal to love’ category that I keep around and wear on a regular basis – the others being the original Parfum by Comme des Garcons and M/Mink by Byredo.  In my non-reviewing, day-to-day life, I don’t always wear perfume and when I do, it is invariably something easy and attractive in the ambery category.  (If you’re thinking of calling me basic, don’t worry – that’s a badge I wear with pride).  

 

Still, there is something about the filthy pungency of raw spices that pulls me in every time.   I can wear the heck out of a sweaty clove-on-steroids (Eau Lente), armpitty cumin (Rubj), and the arid ‘sweddy ballz’ element of whatever poisonous stew of spices thickens a favorite woody scent (Caravelle Epicée).  This is just to explain that, when I say I love the ever-loving shit out of Marescialla, I mean that I really love the ever-loving shit out of it and am not just saying that as your typical fragrance reviewer who exalts the artistic merits of a challenging fragrance only to never again touch it outside of that one review.  Which, to be fair, I have also done. 

 

That said, Marescialla is a scent that probably 95% of people who smell it will think is repulsive.  The opening is a grotesque cacophony of paint thinner, medicinal notes, herbal salve, floor wax, and creeping mold, all underscored by a screechy citric note as harsh as it is unlovely.

 

It’s a bit like walking into an ancient church that’s just been scrubbed down with peppery, neon-yellow antiseptic fluids that cost 0.57 cents from a hardware store.  This harsh, clean scent – the aroma of mace, really – mingles with the damp old wood and stone, creating an atmosphere that’s both a little terrifying and enthralling.  If you told me someone had used a bucket of Marescialla to cover up a ritualistic killing or exorcism gone wrong in an old church, I’d believe you.  The mace adds a clove-like twist, emphasizing the swing between the purifying and the unholy. 

 

I find the scent oddly comforting, though.  I bought Marescialla the day after a particularly gruesome medical procedure I’d undergone in a podiatrist’s office one dark, rainy night in Rome, an office that I realize now must have been repurposed from an ancient crypt or cellar, soaring architraves and all.  Marescialla smells like my experience that night – there was a needle of anesthetic (teasing me with the sweet promise of deliverance), there was blood, there was medical gauze soaked in a brackish, clovey antiseptic, a herb-scented tissue to bring me round after I fainted, and most of all, there was the smell of ancient wood, creeping rot, and damp stone.  It should be no surprise then that fear and loathing and relief (at it all being over) are mixed up in the aroma of Marescialla.  It is already an intensely evocative fragrance – for me, it is memory incarnate.   

 

As it settles, Marescialla reveals a bracing and surprisingly clean blend of clove, rose, wood, and patchouli, reminiscent of skin that’s been thoroughly washed with Pears soap or coal tar.  Though not a conventionally attractive fragrance by any stretch of the imagination, when I wear it, it is one hell of an aide-memoire, and at my age, any aide to the old memoire is deeply appreciated.  

 

Cover Image:  Photo by so flow on Unsplash 

 

Source of Sample:  I bought my bottle of Marescialla from the smaller Santa Maria Novella shop (near Piazza Navona) in Rome in late November 2019. 

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Heure Exquise by Annick Goutal: A Review

25th July 2023

 

I fought tooth and nail to get my hands on a vintage-ish bottle of Annick Goutal’s Heure Exquise, and each time I wear it, I am less and less convinced that the juice was worth the squeeze.  Yes, the sandalwood in the drydown is gloriously real, yes, the rose is a powdery delight, and yes, the iris is the starchiest, whitest Irish linen tablecloth you ever did touch.  But given the ocean of sharp, musky green soap you have to wade through to get to them, I wonder if I’d have been better off investing in another bottle of 1980s Samsara.  Until I remember that I’m not terribly fond of that one either.

 

I have no real criticism to levy at Heure Exquise in particular.  Viewed under any even halfway objective lens, it is a beautiful fragrance.  It is just that my soul remains unstirred by green, aldehydic fragrances that draw on galbanum for their emotive power. 

 

My problem, however, is that I am also drawn to the evocative descriptions of the scent’s retro, womanly charm whenever it is reviewed.  I project myself onto these descriptions, imagining myself to be the type of woman – elegant, fastened-up, but undeniably sensual – for whom Heure Exquise seems to have been created. 

 

But not only am I not that woman, once on the skin, Heure Exquise and its ilk (yes, the whole genre) smells dated to me.  Chanel No. 19, Annick Goutal Heure Exquise, Chanel Cristalle, Ormonde Jayne Tiare, Guerlain Chamade, Lancôme Climat, Amouage Gold Woman – all behemoths of classic female ‘power top’ perfumery – are scents that I respect but cannot bring myself to love.  On the rare occasion that I do wear them, any attempt to mold them to my own personality falls flat and I am left feeling slightly judged (by my own perfume!) for doing unladylike stuff in its presence, like answering emails in my underwear or balancing a bowl of peanuts on my belly as I flick through Netflix.  

 

Still, with Heure Exquise, the am-I-a-dirty-girl-or-am-I-not vibe gives me pause for thought.  Past that atmosphere-rip-tear of a virulently green, dry (gaspingly so) galbanum resin, which gives it more than a passing resemblance to Chanel No. 19, Heure Exquise settles into the almost civety-floral aroma of a bar of Chanel No. 5 soap that’s cracking and grey at the edges, making it seem not entirely impossible that this particular lady who lunches may not have changed her underwear in recent memory.   I’m not saying that it’s animalic but there is something a little poopy or yeasty about that musk-sandalwood tandem.

 

And it is precisely this quality of Heure Exquise that makes me cling to my half used bottle.  I appreciate a bit of ladylike smut holding its corner against the hospital corners of floral aldehydes (the horsey, slightly grimy undercurrent in both Vega and Cuir de Russie, for example, is exactly why I love those fragrances).  But while Heure Exquise is probably the epitome of the classic, feminine power scent and deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as Mitsouko and No. 19, I am never 100% myself in it and for that reason, it has got to go. 

 

Cover Image:  Photo by Ravi Patel on Unsplash 

 

Source of sample:  I bought two bottles of vintage-ish Heure Exquise from the Parfumo Souk in 2021 – the second one only because the first was confiscated en route to me by Dutch customs.  I should have taken this as a sign from the universe that this perfume and I are ill-matched. But of course I didn’t. 

 

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Amber

Ambre Sultan: Saying Goodbye

24th July 2023

 

Serge Lutens’ Ambre Sultan is the Elvis Presley of amber fragrances – it’s left the building, but its influence is still felt everywhere.  Its sugar rush of resins playing tag with dry, aromatic herbs is a motif riffed on by countless ambers since, such as Mitzah (Dior), Amber Absolute (Tom Ford), and, though Chanel would rather die than admit it, even a teeny tiny corner of Le Lion. 

 

Why ‘left the building’?  Well, two reasons.  First, I have just drained the last drops from my bottle.  Second, for such an immediately thick, knotted muscle of a thing (#thuglife), Ambre Sultan is surprisingly short-lived on the skin.  

 

Ambre Sultan will never not smell glorious to me, though.  The love child of a Christmas tree and a lump of cassonade, it smells like a golden resin melting down on your skin on a hot day, then hardening again like a layer of shellac.  It is light and dark all at once, its breathy presence one of dusty books, sunlit herbs, burnt incense, and polished wood. 

 

Now that I’ve drained the last drops of Ambre Sultan, I’m eyeing Dior’s Mitzah like the last slice of pizza.  I am also reassuring myself that, in the absence of Ambre Sultan, I can always suckle at the tit of its genus (Shalimar, according to Luca Turin).  But ah!  There is a special, rough-hewed charm to Ambre Sultan that is quite different to that of Shalimar, and I will miss it.  After all, though Elvis’ music surely owed a great debt to that of Carl Perkins and Little Richard, nobody shook their hips quite like Elvis. 

 

Cover Image: My own photo of a sadly depleted bottle.

 

Source of sample:  I purchased my bottle of Ambre Sultan in Rome in 2014.

 

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Raven by Teone Reinthal Natural Perfume: A Review

12th July 2023

 

Raven by Teone Reinthal Natural Perfume (TRNP) is the kind of rose chypre that hasn’t been in production since the 1980s – big, tart roses spread strewn across bittersweet, glittery balsams and a dank, woody patchouli that smells more of mold than of the oakmoss it’s standing in for.  Something about its opening reminds me both of Oha, a dark, musky rose chypre by Teo Cabanel that has been sadly discontinued, and L’Arte di Gucci, a very civety, rude, ‘full bush’ type of rose scent.  At first you think this is going in the moody, Goth-chic direction of Voleur de Roses, but once that peachy ylang and that spiced amber comes in, you realize that this thing is wearing shoulder pads rather than black eyeliner.

 

I am consistently impressed how Teone Reinthal manages to wring a whole Coco, Opium, or even a Giorgio out of a restricted palette of naturals.  Perfumey to the point of abstraction, what Raven loses in clear-sighted focus on the rose or patchouli or ylang it makes up in sophistication: it is something that your mother or aunt would have smelled like on the nights when they came in to kiss you goodnight before leaving you with the babysitter.  Ah, the mysterious power of adult women….

 

All of which to say that Raven is a freak on the streets – the hairspray sharpness of the opening, the wet mold, the gaseous fumes off that hissing ylang – and a Chanel-blazer-wearing lady between the sheets.  It is both astonishingly beautiful and entirely too mature for my taste.

 

 

Source of sample: My friend, Alex, gifted me her sample a couple of years ago.

 

Cover Image: Photo by Birmingham Museums Trust on Unsplash

 

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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

 

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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. 

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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

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Sakura by Ormonde Jayne: A Review

29th March 2023

 

Sakura by Ormonde Jayne is a Venetian sunset in a bottle, a serene blue sky streaked with pink, apricot, and gold.  It gives me the curious sensation of being relaxed and invigorated at the same time.  With its crisp but milky florals, that first spray feels like a white-gloved waiter handing you a Bellini – fridge-cold Champagne poured over a puree of white peach – with a drop of cream added to aid digestion.  It arrived on a morning so cold that the bottle itself felt like handing ice.  It was only later that I noticed that the colour of the bottle matches the emotional hue of its contents – at the bottom, a bright, clear layer of peachy osmanthus jelly, volatile citrus ethers, and muddled green leaves, at the top, a cloudy tint that might be almond milk blushed pink with cherry blossom. 

 

Sakura borrows heavily from the Ormonde Jayne library, with clear reference to the bright, sunshiny osmanthus of Osmanthus, the tango between the lime peel and buttery gardenia cream of Frangipani, and even some of that green-tinged milkiness of the brown rice in Champaca.  But it never once feels like a re-do.  I feel the self-assured touch of an experienced perfumer here, one that knows that the difference between referencing a house DNA just enough to give the wearer a sense of familiarity and recycling old tropes because all the new ideas have run out.   

 

I used to live in a city where apartment buildings were ringed with cherry trees, and to me, cherry blossom smells very light, fresh, and indeterminate.  Their scent is delicate, with some nuances similar to lilacs, by which I mean they smell honeyed, green, pollen-y, and very slightly bitter or woody.  But real cherry blossom doesn’t smell anything like its representation in commercial perfumery, where, being entirely a fantasy note and not a real material for perfumery, it is invariably interpreted in a heavily fruited, cherry-like, syrupy, and almondy fashion.

 

Sakura by Ormonde Jayne avoids this trap.   It captures the sharp, fresh brightness of cherry blossom live from the tree, thanks mostly to a clever clustering of greenish, pollen-laden floral notes (cyclamen, freesia, water lily) and the woody, ionone-rich twang of violets.  But make no mistake – the freshness does co-exist with sweetness.  Someone, somewhere along the line decided that cherry blossom is predominantly sweet, so Sakura is amply cushioned with enough rose, sandalwood, tonka, and creamy white musks to align it with the collective idea of what cherry blossom smells like, i.e., soft, feminine, a bit powdery, and so on.

 

But never mind that.  The real magic of this scent is at its melting point, where the fresh, sueded florals sink into the milk and pollen below.  The combination of sharp and milky achieves the same sort of milk-over-ice, endorphin-releasing effect as Hongkong Oolong for Nez Magazine (bitter tea against milky floral musks) and Remember Me by Jovoy (fresh green leaves against steamy condensed milk).  Alas, the glory of this moment passes quickly and the rest of the experience is more humdrum.  That is to be expected, I suppose – some beautiful things are meant to flare brightly and then die out.  But while its sillage is not immense, Sakura has impressive longevity on my skin, wafting subtle hints of sharp but milky floral essences for a good twelve hours or more.  I highly recommend Sakura as a transitional spring fragrance, as it is crisp and invigorating enough to make you yearn for the new plant growth due any day now, but warm enough to brace you against the chill of March wind. 

 

Source of sample: Sent to me by the brand for review. However, this is a perfume that I would have certainly purchased for myself after sampling it.

 

Cover Image:  Photo by Great Cocktails on Unsplash  

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Baruti Indigo: A Review

21st March 2023

 

Spyros Drosopoulos of Baruti is one of the most consistently original perfumers I have ever encountered.  Baruti Indigo is a case in point.  This is a perfume built on a series of weird but wearable contrasts.

 

First, it is balsamic but also airily floral.  With its clutch of frankincense and mastic, it smells like a dense wall of greenish balsams – all crushed pine needles, sap, and terpenes – through which a slightly wilted (but still deodorant fresh) tandem of oily hyacinth and lush rose throbs like a flesh wound.  Still, despite all the floral and balsamic notes, the first big hit to the synapses is of polished wood and spice.

 

It is never less than syrupy sweet, thanks to that rose, but it is also as vegetally piquant as long fingers of butter pickles fished straight from a jar to your mouth.  This watery, almost cucumberish element seems like it would make the scent feel fresh, but instead, the overall impression is one of dark, seedy warmth.

 

Something about the interaction between the peppered wood, the gripe water florals, and that balsamic curtain of green makes me think of something delicious reduced to a dark, sticky concentrate.  Its nectary heft makes me think of those balsamic vinegar glazes you buy to drizzle over a tagliata or green walnut salad – sweet, sour, and thick with the umami tang of Parmesan or soy.

 

The sandalwood and labdanum in the base are supposed to bring the bodacious comfort of an amber to finish things off, but hold up, because though there is creaminess, it is the animalic creaminess of goat yoghurt, sweat, and caramel taken too far past burning point.  The lingering tartness or acidity from the hyacinth, or maybe even from Baruti’s signature ‘nood’ – a dank, metallic, but rousing synthetic base built to approximate oud without using any of the industry’s off-the-shelf oud synths – runs in the background like an application, giving the blend an addictive piquancy that keeps your nose returning for more.

 

Like many of Spyros’ creations, Indigo is perhaps too special or distracting for me to wear on a regular basis.  But I plan to buy it one day, if only as a piece of olfactory art I bring out for those specific moments when I want to tumble down wormholes and wander the labyrinthine pathways of a true artist’s imagination.  Vero is gone.  But we still have Spyros. 

 

Source of Sample: I purchased a sample from Indiescents quite a few years ago.

 

Cover Image:  Photo by miro polca on Unsplash

 

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