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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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All Natural Amber Aromatic Balsamic Chypre Cult of Raw Materials Floral Oriental Independent Perfumery Patchouli Review Rose

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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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. 

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Amber Aromatic Chocolate Patchouli Round-Ups Single note exploration Thoughts

Personal Pantheon of Patchouli Perfumes: PART I (Patchouli Bellwethers)

28th February 2023

 

I adore patchouli.  But is it necessary for me to own every iteration?  No, of course not (she said sternly to herself).  My problem is that, because I love patchouli so much, I am as vulnerable to each variant as my Nana is to phone scammers.  One sniff of this intoxicating material and my critical faculties desert me, leaving me with a patchouli collection that is at least 60% redundant.  (The fact that I just admitted to having a patchouli collection is another telling sign of bloat).

 

I think of patchouli fragrances in two broad groups.  First, straight-up patchouli scents, the bellwethers, the patchouli flags in the sand, i.e., scents that exemplify what patchouli is all about.  Within this group, the singular – some might say forceful – character of patchouli nudges the scent in one of three directions: soil, cocoa, or amber.  Second, the group of scents where patchouli is a key player but not necessarily the whole point.  These tend to be more abstract than the first group, and cover a range of derivations, from the rose-patch and patchouli chypre to the aromatic, the boudoir-ish, the peppery, and the animalic.

 

The article you are reading now talks about the first category, namely the more straightforwardly patchouli patchouli fragrances.  This is the group I find most difficult to curate.  I tend to like them all and can argue with myself into the wee hours of the morning about how this one has slightly more geranium or that one a drop more amber, and are therefore worth owning.  But, really, to anyone who only has a broad sense of what patchouli smells like (most of which will come from some childhood association with head shops, hippies, or health food stores), they are much of a muchness.  I wear perfume for myself, so this shouldn’t matter.  But when even I have stopped being able to tell the difference between Patchouli Leaves (Montale), Patchouli (Reminiscence) and Patchouli (Mazzolari) – if I ever could – it is time to pare back.     

      

Don’t mistake this for anything approaching a guide or a compendium.  This is a purely personal approach to cultivation, a paring down to my must-have in each patchouli category I’ve decided there is room for in my collection.  Even the categories are personal.  You might not think it necessary to designate a spot for a rose-patch scent or a pepper-vanilla patchouli, but I do.

 

Further, I am perfectly happy to own more than one fragrance in any one category if I find something beautiful or different that makes that perfume worth hanging onto.  I am not Marie Kondo.  (Apparently, neither is Marie Kondo these days).  All the same, any outright redundancies that I identify will be whittled from my collection and either gifted to family or sold on Basenotes or Parfumo.

 

My objective is to finally start fulfilling the original mandate of this site, which was do as Coco Chanel advised, i.e., to look in the mirror before going out and ‘take one thing off’.   Now, I admit that it’s not great to be referencing anything that a famous Nazi-sympathizer says about style, let alone name a whole website after it, but hindsight is 20:20.   The principle holds true, however.  Rationalize your choices, allowing what remains the chance to shine.  My hope is that by decluttering redundancies, my collection will be reduced to only the ones that make me shiver with pleasure.  After all, if that’s not the point of perfume, I don’t know what is.

 

Soil

Photo by Gabriel Jimenez on Unsplash 

Cold earth.  Fallen leaves.  Dark, damp soil, unsullied by amber or vanilla or anything that might soften that patchouli punch.  Usually Italian.

 

My pick in this category is Patchouli by Santa Maria Novella (full review here).  This is cold, damp earth, with a snap-crackle-pop of camphor up front.  Menacing, dark, and even a bit sexy, Patchouli is nonetheless thin enough to wear during summer.  Flashes of rose, leaves, and leather mark it out as a perfume rather than an essential oil.

 

Saying goodbye to:

 

Patchouli by Etro.  If I didn’t have Patchouli by Santa Maria Novella, I would hang onto this.  It runs close to the Santa Maria Novella in that it is a rather plain, straightforward patchouli, but worn side by side, the Etro emerges as far greener (mint, geranium), woodier (cypress), and more bitter (artemisia, orange).  I will admit that the ETRO Patchouli is the more evolved and elegant fragrance of the two, as it goes on with less of a roar and its pacing is more even over the course of a wear.  However, as much as I hate to pitch my two favorite Italian houses against each other, the Santa Maria Novella Patchouli remains deeply evocative for me, while the Etro never strikes me as anything more than ‘a nice patchouli perfume’.

 

Already yeeted from the Patchouli Patch:

 

Patchouli Antique by Les Néréides.  Despite buying one of the pre-reform bottles from an eBay seller in Italy (back in 2014 when everyone was buying their Les Néréides bottles from the same source), I never quite understood the rapturous praise for this one.  It smells, well, like patchouli, with only that incredibly dusty cedar note to distinguish it from the rest of the pack.  The much advertized vanilla and benzoin finish is disappointingly wan even in the vintage version (their Opoponax, on the other hand, delivers the goods), so if you are feeling saudade for a version that has now melted into the ether of time, don’t worry – you’re not missing much.

 

Patchouli Patch by L’Artisan Parfumeur.  I was never able to perceive the fruity-floral effect of the osmanthus in Patchouli Patch.  In fact, because it wore so similarly to Etro’s Patchouli on me – a wash of cold, dry earth, enlivened here and there by tiny flourishes of herbs and woods – I sold it off not two months after purchasing it.

 

Patchouli EDT by Molinard.  Sour patch, kids.  I had a 2000 edition bottle, the clear glass with the smoky central label.  Though undeniably good value and solidly constructed (like all Molinard scents), the dry, almost bitter herbalcy of Patchouli EDT always smelled ‘old mannish’ to me.  This dusty air of decrepitude stopped me from luxuriating in the minty patchouli that lay at its core (there’s a process of one’s own skin becoming one with patchouli as the day wears on, and that didn’t occur for me here).  It is a solid, unadorned patchouli for those of you who don’t want the distraction of rich ambers, chocolate, or vanilla.  Unfortunately, for me, once these things are stripped away, all I smell is neglect.     

 

Cocoa

Photo by Tetiana Bykovets on Unsplash

Patchouli in the guise of cocoa or chocolate.  Bitter, earthy, oscillating between edible and inedible.

 

Borneo 1834 by Serge Lutens (Dark Chocolate); Coromandel Eau de Toilette by Chanel (White Chocolate)

 

Borneo 1834 was one of the first niche fragrances I ever bought, and one that never fails to trigger a swell of emotion in me.  Its dark, musty, camphorous opening reminds me of the day I bought it – a blustery day in Rome, walking in dark streets before they turned the streetlamps, still slightly drunk from the wine indulgently but unwisely ordered at lunch.  The cocoa note here is the dark dust soldered (with heavy machinery) off a black block of 97% chocolate, turned greenish at the edge by either mold or galbanum resin.  Though there are gourmand nuances fluttering around the periphery – a hint of caramelized labdanum resin perhaps – the overall impression is of a cocoa that is as dry and medicinal as anything found in Chinese medicine.  

 

The dustiness of the cacao reminds me of the shut-up rooms and papers in my childhood home, a decrepit old thing built originally as a forge the year the Irish Famine began in 1845.  All the rooms were cold and damp.  My brothers and I would routinely wear up to five layers of jumpers to survive the winters (we looked like genderless Stay Puft marshmallow people from a distance).  My mum, a teacher, kept all her school papers and homework in a study, where it was left to gently decay over the years.  Borneo 1834 smells powerfully of this noble rot – greenish-blackish spots of damp colonizing reefs of forgotten papers.  Where Coromandel is creamy, luxuriant as a cat, and comforting, Borneo is raw, dry, and confrontational.  I used to think of Coromandel as the better perfume, more wearable – but over the years, my parameters have shifted.  I now think of Coromandel as a wonderful perfume, but of Borneo 1834 as an emotionally intense experience that I cannot imagine ever tiring of.

 

Coromandel Eau de Toilette by Chanel shifts the paradigm on Borneo 1834 by re-using the same basic template, but switching out the dark, musty 97% cocoa for the silkiness of white chocolate and adding a gorgeous rich, antiseptic frankincense note.  The opening has the harsh aldehydic sparkle common to all the discontinued Les Esclusifs eaux de toilette, accentuated by a touch of bitter orange, and for a while, I imagine I am wearing a tweed overcoat kindly offered to me by a man, with whiffs of some male muskiness and sharp cologne still lingering on the scratchy wool.  But the green-brown earthiness of the patchouli soon sinks back into a giant pillow of orris, vanilla, and woods, for an effect that teeters between powder and cream.  What I love about Coromandel is its fatty, warming richness.  It feels generous and kind, the perfume equivalent of drinking a bath-tub-sized mug of hot chocolate spiked with Irish whiskey on a winterish day, or taking off your high heels and feeling your sore feet sink into the folds of a thick cream carpet.  Though it is not as evocative for me as Borneo 1834, and is therefore far more of a perfume than an experience, I firmly consider Coromandel EDT to be an essential part of my collection, as the yin to Borneo 1834’s yang.

 

The post-2016 eau de parfum and 2022 parfum versions of Coromandel are fine (with the balance between bright, fizzy incense and creamy chocolate a little off-center in both), but neither are an adequate replacement for the balanced specialness of the 2007 eau de toilette.  Therefore, when my bottle runs out, I won’t be replacing it.  That means that, within a year or two, I will have to content myself with only one choice in the cocoa category (Borneo 1834).

 

 

Saying goodbye to:

 

Psychédélique by Jovoy.  By God, this is good.  Thick, creamy swirls of dark (but not too dark) chocolate underpinned by a rich, boozy amber that just beg you to sip it rather than spray it on your skin.  The patchouli is clearly patchouli – green, dirty, earthy as hell – but a transubstantiation of sorts occurs as you inhale, transmuting the soil to a fine-boned, liquid mass of chocolate, dried fruit, double cream, and whiskey.  Spray-on truffles by way of Pierre Hermès.  Despite the glut of gourmand notes, Psychédélique veers towards masculine, possibly thanks to the hand of Jacques Flori, who did many of the Etro fragrances, and whose signature (if he may be said to possess one) is the addition of mint, geranium, and carnation to keep even the most ambery of drydowns fresh and lively.  In the end, however, Psychédélique cannot sustain the rich chocolate truffle accord for very long, soon devolving into a pleasant but standard ambery-patch, of which I have shamefully multiple variations.  Therefore, as much as it pains me, I am compelled to vote Psychédélique off the island.

 

 

Already yeeted from the Patchouli Patch:

 

Patchouli Noir by Il Profvmo.  I confess that I bought a (secondhand) bottle of this only because the great Darvant of Basenotes fame always spoke so highly of it.  What I liked about it: the mint, the dusting of dark cocoa over (unadvertised) spacey white musks, and the gentle spice of carnation or clove.  What I didn’t like about it: the tendency of the mint and vanilla mixture to come tantalizingly close to the wonderful scent of mint chocolate chip gelato but never quite get there because the accord’s impact is immediately diffused into scads of fluffy white musk.  Sigh.  Cock-blocked by white musk once again.

 

Amber

Photo by Alexander Grey on Unsplash

The earthy bitterness of patchouli balanced by the caramelic sweetness of amber (labdanum, benzoin, opoponax, vanilla).  

        

Inoubliable Elixir Patchouli by Reminiscence.  This is my absolute favorite in the ambery patch category, and every time my wandering eye alights upon other ambery-patch scents, and I head off to explore, I return to Inoubliable Elixir with my tail between my legs.  I’m going to call it right now – Inoubliable Elixir is the Joanne Woodward to my Paul Newman.  So, what does the steak of patchouli scents offer that the hamburgers of the category do not?

 

My answer is depth.  Now, the basic structure of the ambery patch template never changes that wildly.  With two such heavy, rich accords – patchouli and amber – there can always be minute variations in pacing (i.e., adjusting the point in the scent’s development at which the amber turns up to dunk the patch in its much-needed bath of hot, resinous caramel) and decoration (spices, floral notes, citrus), but the crux remains that balance between the leafy earthiness of patchouli and the voluptuous sweetness of amber.

 

Inoubliable Elixir trounces its competitors by ensuring that its patchouli and its amber go miles deep in flavor.  The patchouli is raw, pungent, and almost feral, its darkness lifted a little by a bitter, grassy vetiver, a material that sings in the same earthy register as patchouli but inhabits the surface of earth’s crust, when sunshine and water still penetrate.  The basic amber accord has been thickened here with a generous dressing of both tolu balsam, a South American resin that smells simultaneously like liquidambar, crushed ‘hot’ spices like cloves and cinnamon, and melted beeswax candles, and tonka bean, which throws in its roughened, tobacco-ish, almond cream heft for good measure.

 

When the dirty, greenish patchouli smashes into this thick, sexy, red-gold amber, it smells like I wish my skin would smell like naturally.  I wish to live in this smell, roll around in it, have my pores exude it.  Mind you, I own only the original version of this and don’t know how the modern version (in the clear bottle) measures up.  But if it smells anything like the stuff that comes out of my wavy gold bottle, then there is no reason to ever stray, as it is perfection.  It is also, like, €45 for a 100ml bottle.  Patchouli by Reminiscence is similar to Inoubliable Elixir Patchouli but much lighter (think 40% of the full whack of Inoubliable Elixir), so I like to wear that in summer.

 

 

Saying goodbye to:

 

Patchouli by Mazzolari.  Similar to the Reminiscence but with a honeyed labdanum material that gives the patchouli a luscious, smoked toffee dimension.   It is so rich and sweet that wearing it feels like sucking on a never-ending square of butter caramel.  All the Mazzolari perfumes have this almost super-sonic richness to them, an old school sort of intensity that translates to nuclear longevity and sillage, and Patchouli is no exception.  It would make the perfect starter patchouli for someone who isn’t quite ready for the purer renditions of the note, as the patchouli here is not the dank sort that reminds you of upturned earth and musty wardrobes, but rather a sort of outdoorsy, green grass note.  The dry-down is all about the amber, which slowly transitions from a rich, caramelic amber à la Ambre Precieux (minus the lavender) to a dry, almost powdery finish with a spackle of resins remaining on your skin à la Ambre 1144.  However, gorgeous as it may be, Patchouli by Mazzolari essentially skirts too close to Inoubliable Elixir’s overall effect for me to keep it hanging around.

 

Patchouli Leaves by Montale:  The marketing copy for this boasts that the patchouli leaves for this fragrance were first soaked in vanilla extract and then left to macerate for two whole years in an oak barrel.  The top notes, consisting of insanely rich but dry patchouli that has a raisin-like booziness to it, like aged cognac, suggest that the blurb might, for once, be true.  The dark, boozy patchouli is joined very quickly by a buttery, warm vanilla and amber that serve to sweeten the mix.  The final impression is of a warm, golden river of almost drinkable, spiced brown patchouli, boozy vanilla, and thick amber.  The amber is slightly resinous, adding at parts a slight roughness to break up the smooth vanillic undertow and a touch of powder towards the end.  It is as comfortable as putting on a great big woolly sweater over your work clothes when you come in from the rain.  If I didn’t love Inoubliable Elixir so much, Patchouli Leaves by Montale would probably be the next best choice (for me personally) because it is earthier and less syrupy-sweet than the Mazzolari.

 

Already yeeted from the Patchouli Patch:

 

Patchouli Nobile by Nobile 1942.  To be fair, Patchouli Nobile is a far more nuanced take on the ambery patch genre than anything else mentioned above.  The familiar tandem of earthy patchouli and caramelic labdanum is elevated in two ways.  First, by way of a fougère-ish accord – a textured umami brew of sandalwood, cedar, geranium (or lemon), and oakmoss – which gives it an unexpectedly masculine dimension.  And second, with a touch of smoke by way of a cured ham guaiacol and a sharp, piney frankincense.  Patchouli Nobile is not the first ambery patch to draft in some frankincense or myrrh for moral support – Patchouly by Profumum Roma also treads this path – but to my knowledge, it is one of the rare modern ambery patch scents that dips a toe so unabashedly into fougère territory.  (This of course makes sense, as patchouli has drafted in as an oakmoss replacer by perfumers for both fougères and chypres since IFRA first started clearing its throat).  

 

However, despite its substantial Italian charm, Patchouli Nobile is too on the shy and retiring side to appeal to me.  It is almost too subtle.  Then there is the issue of the typical Nobile 1942 drydown, which seems to rely on a roster of cheap, slightly scratchy white or woody musks.  I bought it, I wore it, I tried to go steady with it, but it never put out in the specific way I wanted it to.  In the end, wearing Patchouli Nobile made me long instead for the gutsier, older versions of Givenchy Gentleman and L’Instant de Guerlain pour Homme Eau Extrême by Guerlain, both of which do a more convincing job of marrying the earthiness of patchouli to something sweet (amber, cocoa, sandalwood) and something fougère-ish (lavender, coumarin, anise).  I sold my bottle, which wasn’t hard, because this is difficult to source outside of the EU (and sometimes, indeed, outside of Italy).

 

Patchouly by Profumum Roma.  Profumum Roma fragrances are a bit hit and miss for me, so I only tend to buy the travel bottles when I am in Rome, and even then, only after repeated testing.  The ones I like are a little off the beaten track of common praise; for example, I find the funky, feline cinnamon musk bomb that is Fiore d’Ambra (review here) to be far more interesting than the much-praised Ambra Aurea, and Dambrosia, while admittedly cursed with a vile pear hairspray opening, to be a better sandalwood fragrance than the brand’s own Santalum.

 

It should come as no surprise, therefore, that while Patchouly is extremely pleasant, I find that it essentially splits the difference between an ambery patch à la Patchouli Leaves (Montale) and a chocolatey patch à la Psychédélique (Jovoy).  The sole innovation here is that dry, smoky, but also sparkly incense that Profumum shoehorns into their more balsamic fragrances, which is always welcome.  Then again, if I want myrrh, I can always buy some Olibanum (review here) or, if I crave that dry, leathery sparkle of a labdanum-patchouli-incense pairing, I can wear Le Lion (Chanel), which effortlessly outdoes Profumum at its own schtick. (To cut a long story short, I sold my travel bottle of Patchouly).

 

Conclusion

 

My final choices in the patchouli bellwether group are four: Patchouli by Santa Maria Novella for earth, Borneo 1834 by Serge Lutens and Coromandel EDT by Chanel for cocoa (paring back to only Borneo 1834 when my Coromandel runs out), and Inoubliable Elixir Patchouli by Reminiscence for amber.  I am very happy with my choices, and perhaps more importantly, happy to have fewer choices.

 

Source of samples: I either bought or swapped for every single perfume referenced in this article.

 

Cover Image:   Photo by Gwendal Cottin on Unsplash 

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Amber Balsamic Honey Patchouli Resins Review Rose

Dior Mitzah: A Review

13th January 2023

 

If you’ve never smelled Dior Mitzah before, then telling you that it smells like cinnamon, honey, rose, amber and incense is about as useful as telling you that a pound cake contains butter, eggs, and flour.   Change the proportion of any one of those ingredients and you get a different result but only slightly.  Because it’s still a pound cake.  Most spicy-sparkly-balsamic ambers exist on a pound cake plane, separated by infinitesimal degrees of smoke or sweetness or heft.  Perfumes like Ambre Sultan (Serge Lutens), Ambra Aurea (Profumum Roma), Miyako (Annayake), Vento nel Vento (Bois 1920), and yes, Mitzah (Dior) all form part of a universal comfort lexicon.  It is hard to go wrong with any of them.  But they are also much of a muchness.

 

There are primarily three things that distinguish Mitzah.  First, its texture.  For a scent made with such heavy materials – honey, labdanum, cardamom, patchouli – it feels remarkably airy, like gauze stretched across a window.  Mitzah wears as if all these materials had been placed in a low oven, dried overnight, and then, once cooled, ground to a fine golden mica that applies like one of those edible body dusting powders.  If you’ve ever eaten a Krispy Kreme glazed doughnut right after the red light flashes, then you’ll know that sensation of sinking your teeth into that thin glaze and suddenly finding nothing in your mouth but air because the entire thing dissolved the minute it hit the warmth of your tongue.  Mitzah replicates that.

 

Second, the peppery bitterness introduced by the cardamom note, which firmly pushes back against the glittery sweetness of the perfumed, freeze-dried air that is the rest of Mitzah.  The same might be said for the gentle earthiness of the patchouli, which subtly darkens the bright rose gold aura of the scent and gives it a hint of something approaching depth.  These little counterpoints give Mitzah an air of balance and refinement not that common in the amber genre.

 

Third, there is a ghostly ‘roasted’ note that smells like the sesame seeds or cinnamon sticks toasted in a dry pan.  It is not a major component, but it adds a point of interest, much like the crushed thyme and bay leaf in Ambre Sultan, or the licorice and spilled petrol notes in Vento nel Vento.  Mitzah needs this point of interest, because without it, it becomes one of those diaphanous ambery-spicy scents without distinction that you throw on for comfort on a cold day and promptly forget about five minutes later.   And while I don’t think Mitzah is quite as interesting or as exceptional as its reputation makes it out to be (Paris exclusivity having greatly shaped its mystique over the years), it does do an excellent job of straddling that gap between mindless comfort and intentionality.  For that reason alone, I can almost forgive myself for not buying Eau Noire instead when I was last downwind of the Dior Paris Mothership’s postal reach.      

 

Cover Image: Photo by Lucas Kapla on Unsplash

 

Source of Sample:  Sample, ha!  My jeroboam-sized bottle laughs in the face of a mere sample.  Does double duty as a barbell.  Purchased by my own fair hand in 2017 from Dior Paris. 

 

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Sundowner by Tauer Perfumes: A Review

14th December 2022

 

Sundowner is interesting because, despite the much advertized chocolate and orange notes, it gets the salivary glands working without being foody.  The first blast is a foghorn of amber, spices, booze, and veiny pipe tobacco, but there is an undertow of medicinal sourness that smells like wood chips left to ferment in a rusty barrel.  The Tauer signature is strong, namely the rubbery smoke reminiscent of freshly creosote-ed fences, the brash salty amber, the piercing cinnamon, all set against a watery floral note that might be rose.  There are, at least initially, some parallels to PHI Une Rose de Kandahar, minus the fruity apricot conserve, and to the muscular expansiveness of L’Air du Desert Marocain.   

 

But the more I wear it, the more I think Sundowner does something special.  In draping the front end with all this almost fermented, grungy funk, Tauer sets the stage for the tobacco note to emerge through a new curtain rather than the usual one of dried fruit, gingerbread, and vanilla.   And, as it turns out, sour is better than sweet when it comes to carving out the true scent of tobacco leaf because Sundowner features one of the best, most true to life renditions of tobacco that I have ever smelled.  It is briny, rich, tart, and sweet all at once.  How this was accomplished, I neither know nor care.  When you find the spirit of tobacco bottled, you just buy it and let it take you on a magic carpet ride every time.

 

 

Source of Sample: I first sampled this in Bertozzini in Rome when I was back for a month in March this year. I bought a full bottle in November from ParfuMarija in Dublin.  

 

Cover Image:   Photo by Ilya Chunin on Unsplash         

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Amber Ambergris Animalic Aromatic Attars & CPOs Collection Cult of Raw Materials Frankincense Green Floral Herbal Honey Independent Perfumery Jasmine Mukhallats Musk Oakmoss Oud Oudy mukhallats Patchouli Review Rose Round-Ups Sandalwood The Attar Guide

Areej Le Doré History of Attar Collection (Fragrances): Reviews

4th October 2022

 

The first release in the History of Attar Collection was a set of traditionally-distilled attars specifically commissioned by Areej Le Dore to give its customers an idea of what Indian attars are (thoughts and reviews of the attar set here).  This release, on the other hand, is a collection of spray-based fragrances (not oils) made by Russian Adam himself, rather than commissioned from an attar distiller.  Since their composition do revolve around the use and theme of Indian attars, however, it might be useful for readers to read my previous article describing the attar set first.  

 

 

 

Beauty and the Beast

 

Photo by Maksym Sirman on Unsplash

 

I wrote about the new generation of Amouage attars (2021) a while back, but in trying to couch my disappointment in terms of market realities, I skipped over the sense of loss – emotional and patrilineal – of never seeing the likes of Badr al Badour, Al Shomukh, and Al Molook again.  These were mukhallats that successfully positioned feral ouds against the softening backdrops of rose, ambergris, and musk, stoking a love for oud among the heretofore uninitiated.  The first sniff of Beauty and the Beast makes me realize, with great joy, that cultural ‘scent’ patrimony is never lost entirely, but rather, constantly over-written by new entrants like this.   

 

Based on the age-old Middle Eastern custom of pairing the sometimes challengingly sour, regal animalism of Hindi oud (the Beast) with the soft, winey sweetness of rose (the Beauty), Beauty and the Beast doesn’t deviate too dramatically from the basic rose-oud template.  When the starring raw materials are this good, you don’t need to.  The Hindi oud and the rose oils used here are so complex in and of themselves that an experienced perfumer chooses wisely when they leave them alone to work their synergistic magic on each other. 

 

Interestingly, the ouds in Beauty and the Beast have been distilled using rose hydrosols, meaning that the water normally loaded into the still with the oud chips has been replaced with rosewater, the natural by-product of distilling roses.  I am not sure that this makes a difference to the resulting oud oil, but the environmentalist in me likes the thinking around circular economy it implies.  

 

The balancing act the materials perform is nothing short of magisterial.  When the Hindi oud at first challenges the senses with its pungent, feral qualities – think beasts of burden steaming together in a barn, old saddles piled on old wooden barrels in the corner, piss-soaked straw matted into the dirt floor – the rose (not Taifi, for sure, but more likely something like Rosa bourboniana, used to distill attar of roses, or Rosa damascena, used to distill ruh gulab, or a mix) is there merely to soften and sweeten things.  Later, however, when there is more room to breathe, the rose offers up a kaleidoscope of different ‘flavors’, cycling through wine and chocolate to raspberry liquor, Turkish delight, truffles, and finally, that traditional rose-sandalwood ‘attar’ scent.

 

But it is crucial to note that these nuances all unfold in sequence, matching step for step the series of nuances emerging from the Hindi oud.  So, when the oud reveals that regal, spicy leather underpinning so typical of high-quality Hindi ouds, the rose offers up its truffles and wine.  The two materials continue to evolve and in doing so, change the character of the rose-oud pairing we are smelling.  First, the character is pungent and sweet, then it is leathery and winey, then it is dry, woody-spicy and jellied-loukhoum-like.  This evolution, this symbiotic dance, lasts for a whole 24 hours, so you have ample time to luxuriate in its every transition.

 

There is nothing really new or innovative about the rose-oud pairing, but Beauty and the Beast is worth your time and money if you are looking for an exemplar of the heights it can scale when only truly excellent materials are used.  It is strong, rich, long-lasting, but most of all, interesting and beautiful from every angle, from top to toe.  In terms of what is still available in this style today, I would rank Beauty and the Beast alongside The Night (Frederic Malle), Mukhallat Dahn al Oudh Moattaq (Ajmal), Al Hareem (Sultan Pasha Attars), and Al Noukhba Elite Blend (Abdul Samad al Qurashi).  In other words, the fragrances that best capture the feral but regal nature of Hindi oud, balancing it perfectly against dark, sweet roses.  For what it’s worth, my husband, who is a hardcore oud enthusiast, kept muttering stuff, “Good Lord, that is good,” and “Oh, that smells insanely good” all day long every time I wore it.

  

 

 

Ambre de Coco

 

Photo:   Aromatics, spice, and dried plant material for a shamama distillation being loaded into the deg. Photo by Pranjal Kapoor. 

 

Coming across a genuine shamama attar in the wild is like thumbing through a library of slim poetry books and pulling out a tome with the girth of a Ulysses.  Shamama attars, which can take two months of continuous distilling and over 60 separate fragrant materials to make, are so bewilderingly complex that even reading about how they are made is exhausting.  I’ve written about the process here, but in case you haven’t come prepared with sandwiches, a flask of tea, and a map, then let me just tl;dr it for you: an even more aromatic MAAI, wearing a bear pelt.

 

But Ambre de Coco takes it one step further – there is a shamama attar at its heart, but it is wrapped up in a dark, almost bitter, but superbly plush cocoa powder note, stone fruit accords, and a deeply furry impression that suggests that deer musk grains might have been involved at some point.  Complexity-wise, this is like taking Ulysses and wrapping it in a layer of Finnegan’s Wake.

 

Where to begin?  Let’s start with the amber.  Forget the idea of those cozy-vanillic-resinous ambers like Ambre Sultan (Serge Lutens), Amber Absolute (Tom Ford) or Ambre Precieux (Maître Parfumeur et Gantier).  This is Indian amber, or what they call shamamatul amber, which is green, mossy, and astringent as hell, as if amber resin was not a resin after all but a stalk of rhubarb or a copper penny.  Indian ambers are lean and a bit stern – there is zero fat on their bones.  Inside this carnivorous structure, the rest of these 50-odd raw materials flow as a swirl of tastes and impressions rather than identifiable notes.  Aromatic grasses mingle with bitter, mossy aromas, wet-smelling herbs, roasted roots, dried berries, calligraphy ink, floral bath salts, and all sorts of dried lichens, leaves, and twigs.  It smells more like something a traditional Chinese medicine man would brew up to cure an infection than a perfume.

 

Now, imagine all this soaked in a rich cocoa powder that softens all the pointy, jangly bits that threaten to poke your eye out, and you get an impression of being plunged into the warm embrace of fur – both animal and human.  The cocoa is not at all edible – fold away any expectations you might have of something gourmandy and sweet.  Rather, its powdery texture cleverly replicates the stale chocolate bitterness-dustiness that is a natural feature of real deer musk tinctures.  Shamama attars and shamama-based perfumes can often be animalic, even when they lean exclusively on plant-based materials (Ajmal’s 1001 Nights being a case in point), relying on the natural funkiness of the aromatics or woods or moss to create something that, in some quarters, might be termed a Parfum de Fourrure (a fur perfume).  Here, Ambre de Coco leans a little on oud and ambergris to boost that effect, but in spirit and intent, it joins the ranks of other glorious Indian shamama-inspired perfumes, such as 1001 Nights (Al Lail) by Ajmal and Jardin de Shalimar by Agarscents Bazaar.

 

Photo:  Charila, a type of Indian lichen that is similar to oakmoss. Photo by Pranjal Kapoor

 

The drydown is suitably bitter-musky-tobacco-ish in the way of these Indian shamamatul ambers, but I am not sure whether this is because of the additional dose of oakmoss and ambergris, or because of the naturally aromatic aspects of charila, an inky-smelling moss material from India that is oakmoss-adjacent and also the first material to be distilled in the shamama recipe.  Either way, my comment about MAAI wearing a fur coat stands.  This is a two-day affair and can be smelled on the skin even after a hot shower.  Considering that genuine shamama attars can take two months to distill and starts at a minimum of $2,000 a kilo for one that’s been distilled into real sandalwood oil, $360 for a 48ml bottle of perfume that not only does justice to shamama but elevates it to the small pantheon of shamama greats that exist on the market today, Ambre de Coco is both beautiful and superb value for money.          

 

 

 

Malik Al Motia

 

Photo by Bibi Pace on Unsplash

 

First, a bit of etymology. Motia (or alternatively mogra) is Urdu for Sambac jasmine, which itself is popularly known as ‘Arabian jasmine’, distinguishing it from Jasminum grandiflorum, the more classical jasmine grown in France and India.  You can buy motia in two forms – as an attar al motia, which involves jasmine petals distilled directly over a base of pure sandalwood, or as a ruh al motia, which is the pure essence of the flower, no sandalwood base.   Malik means, loosely, owner or King in Arabic, which I guess suggests that Malik al Motia is supposed to be the Supreme Boss of all Jasmines.  

 

But if you think that means you’re getting something loud, you would be wrong.  Russian Adam mentioned an interesting fact about traditional attars that I hadn’t known, which is that attar wallahs distilling in the old Indian manner produce essences that are pitched at a perfectly modulated mid-tone point, meaning that the final aroma is never too loud or too quiet.  And I find Malik Al Motia to be a perfect example of what he means.

 

This is jasmine with all the lights switched off.  It starts out as dusky, velvety, and slightly indolic in tone, similar to the darkened jasmine found in Ruh al Motia (Nemat) as well as to the soft, magic market indoles of Cèdre Sambac (Hermes).   But the leathery indoles are smoothed out by a judicious touch of the grandiflorum variety of jasmine, whose luscious sweetness and full-bodied charm sands down any rough edges on that Sambac.  Hints of overripe, boozy fruit – like an overblown banana liquor – lend a steamy tone but remain firmly in the background.  Oddly, Malik al Motia smells far more like jasmine than the Motia attar from the attar set that has presumably been used somewhere in the mix. 

 

There are resins and woods in the base, even some oud.  But these just act as the dimmer switch on the jasmine, making sure that everything, even the parts of jasmine that are naturally sunny, are subsumed into the folds of that black velvet olfactory curtain.  The rich, honeyed ‘just-licked skin’ tones of Sambac come through at the end and linger plaintively for hours.  Similar to the now discontinued Gelsomino triple extract by Santa Maria Novella, the natural end to any Sambac is that rich, skanky sourness of your wrist trapped under a leather watch-band all day under intense heat.

 

Yet Malik al Motia remains intensely floral.  Wearing feels like waking up in a field of jasmine at dusk, the air still redolent with scent.  It is not especially feminine and clearly not a soliflore.  The material’s rich indoles lend a slightly dirty feel, as does the mealy woods in the base (reading more cedar-ish than sandalwoody to my nose), but it manages to be darkly, sensually ‘adult’ without ever tipping over into full frontal territory.  Soft, black-purple velvet, a hushed ambience, your heels sinking into deep carpet.  Makes wish I still had someone to seduce.   

 

 

 

Al Majmua

 

Photo by Frank Albrecht on Unsplash

 

Al Majmua is based on the famous majmua attar, a traditional Indian blend of four other already-distilled attars and ruhs, namely, ruh khus (vetiver root), ruh kewra (pandanus, or pandan leaf), mitti attar (a distillation of hand-made clay bowls), and kadam attar (distilled from the small, yellow bushy flowers of the Anthocephalus cadamba).   Together, these attars combine to mimic the lush, earthy fragrance of India during the rainy season.  In Al Majmua, it is the green, foresty tones of the ruh khus that dominate, at least at first.  Its rugged, earthy aroma smells like the roots of a tree dipped into a classic men’s fougère, something green and bitter enough to put hairs on your chest.  In fact, there is a chalky galbanum-like note here that links Al Majmua, at least superficially, with the front half of Incenza Mysore.

 

But what I love about majmua attars, and hence also about Al Majmua, is that the juicy-sharp bitterness of the opening tends to soften into an earthy, dusty bitterness – nature’s slide, perhaps, from vetiver root to mitti.  

 

This earthy, aromatic aroma is complex and ever-shifting, sometimes letting the slightly minty yellow floral of the kadam attar peek through, sometimes the piercing, fruity-vanillic, yet funky aroma of pandanus leaf (kewra attar), which Russian Adam has cleverly accentuated by adding a cat-pissy blackcurrant up front.  But what really predominates is the earthy wholesomeness of soil and dust, emphasized with patchouli, and given a spicy, armpitty warmth by a sturdy cedarwood in the base that believes itself to be a musk of some sort.  Though the notes don’t include musk or even a naturally musky material like costus, there is an aspect to Al Majmua that smells like the creamed, stale skin at the base of a woman’s neck.  A perfumer friend of mine, Omer Pekji, recommended to me long ago to wear a swipe of Majmua attar under my Muscs Khoublai Khan (Serge Lutens), and I wonder if the reason this particular layering combination works so well is because muskiness forms the bridge between the two perfumes.

 

What I admire the most about Al Majmua is the way that the perfumer chose to simply frame the majmua attar at the center (since it is a complex-smelling thing in and of itself) and then arrange other, complementary materials around it to draw out and emphasize certain aspects of the attar’s character.  For example, a silvery-powdery iris is placed in just the right place to highlight the dustiness of mitti, the cedarwood to underline the majmua’s slight bodily funk, the patchouli to draw even longer 5 o’ clock shadows under the jaw of the ruh khus, and so on.   

 

Fresh over animalic.  Earthy but not pungent.  Imagine Green Irish Tweed sprayed over a deer musk attar that faded down a long time ago.  Indians love majmua attars for their complex, aromatic character and so do I, but I like Al Majmua the best when it is almost done.  Because, just as the slow, gentle fade-to-grey starts to happen, there is a magnificent moment where the natural sandalwood smells like – similar to some parts of Musk Lave and Jicky – idealized male skin.   Meaning, skin after a hot shave, application of an old-fashioned but honest sandalwood tonic (Geo F. Trumpers, say), and then an hour of gentle exertion in the cold air.

 

 

 

Mysore Incenza

 

 

Adjust your expectations.  You see, I know what you’re thinking.  You see the words ‘Mysore’ and ‘incense’ and, like Pavlov’s dog, you immediately salivate, expecting something warm, ambered, and resinous, like Sahara Noir or Amber Absolute mixed with the best, creamiest version of Bois des Iles or Bois Noir (Chanel) that ever existed, but somehow better, you know, because it is all artisanal and therefore deeper, richer, more authentic than anything you can buy on the shelves of your local department store or even niche perfumery.

 

Mysore Incenza is not that.  In fact, so large was the gap between my expectations and reality that I had to wear it five times in a row to come to terms with what it is rather than what I thought it was going to be.   In pairing the extremely high-pitched, dusty, lime-peel notes of frankincense with the extremely soft, ‘neutral’ woody tones of the vintage Mysore sandalwood (from 2000) included in the attar set (read my review here), a transubstantiation of sorts is performed, and something else entirely emerges.

 

Specifically, this new creature is born in the surprising mold of Chanel No. 19 or Heure Exquise (Annick Goutal), with one small toe dipped into the Grey Flannel genepool on the way.  At least at first.  It glitters in this high, pure register, an explosion of Grappa, lime peel, and wood alcohol chased by baby powder, a striking frankincense, and what smells to me like the dusky, cut-bell-pepper dryness of galbanum and the slightly shrill smell of violet leaf.  This creates a dry, clean, woody aroma that smells purified and ascetic.  This kind of frankincense, perhaps changed by the presence of the sandalwood, smells unlit – slightly waxy, slightly powdered, and definitely not smoky, although it occurs to me that the perception of smokiness is as personal and nuanced as your political beliefs.

 

There is no warmth, no sweetness, and no comfort at all.  Don’t look towards the sandalwood to provide any relief, either.  Mysore Incenza is cleansing, angular, and ‘holy’ in the same way as other famously austere scents in incense canon are, such as Incense Extreme (Tauer), Encens Flamboyant (Annick Goutal), and Ambra (Lorenzo Villoresi).  These are all fragrances that steer away from softening the jutting sharpness of frankincense with amber or vanilla or flowers, choosing instead to focus on the dry, musky-soapy, ‘hard core’ character of resin that radiates hard, like tiny particles of mica or dust leaping off the bible when the priest thumps it to make a point in the angriest of angry sermons.   Mysore Incenza keeps you kneeling straight, anxiously waiting for the priest to say that you can sit back down again.

 

Although technically beautiful, it is most definitely not my kind of thing.  My personal tastes run towards hedonism and gluttony rather than asceticism.  I put the hair shirt away a long time ago.  People who loved Grandenia will also love Mysore Incenza, as there is something of the same vibe.    

 

 

 

Le Mitti

 

Photo: The clay bowls of Indian earth loaded into the still to make mitti attar.  Photo by Pranjal Kapoor, with full permission to use.

 

As Russian Adam warns, Le Mitti is less of a perfume and more of a bottled emotion, so expect a maelstrom with a short but dramatic trajectory from start to finish.  Like Mitti from Oudologie (review here), Le Mitti is a departure from the mineralic, petrichor effect of very traditional mitti attars, in that it is smoky to the point of smelling charred.  I like this way of approaching mitti, as it feels more modern and exciting.  What is lost in all this delicious smoke, however, is that essential feeling of something wet (rain) hitting something dry (the parched red soil of India), which in effect activates the geosmin in the earth and makes that pure ‘after the rain’ effect ring out.  Try Après L’Ondée, if that’s what you’re looking for, or a traditional mitti attar.  But remember that Le Mitti is a perfume, not an attar, and is therefore more of an imaginative interpretation than a dogged replication.

 

So, what does Le Mitti smell like?  Like a perfect storm of peanut dust, tar, soot – charred remnants of a wood fire, soot snaking up the wall in black streaks.  It is Comme des Garcons Black without the anise or the clove.  I love it.  But it is definitely a hybrid mitti rather than a pureline one.  It joins the earthy red dust of Indian clay bowls to the dry, sooty scent of an Irish cottage without ventilation.  As you might imagine, it is hilariously atmospheric.  Don’t wear it unless you’re prepared for people to ask if you’ve been near an open fire recently.

 

 

 

Gul Hina

 

Photo by Photos by Lanty on Unsplash

 

Gul Hina, or Gul Heena, or sometimes even Attar Mehndi, meaning ‘flower of henna’, is an attar derived from distilling henna leaves (Lawsonia Inermis) directly into sandalwood oil.   As you might guess from the name, the attar comes from the same plant as the popular red dye that is used to paint elaborate patterns onto the hands and face of brides in most Indian weddings, be it a Hindu, Muslim, or Sikh ceremony.  There is also a Ruh Mehndi, but since it is very expensive at $43,000 per kilogram (while the attar ranges between $500 and $5,000 per kilogram), it is rarely used commercially.  Well, to be honest, neither the attar or ruh of henna is well known outside of India and is therefore under-utilized in Western niche or artisanal perfumery.   Strangelove NYC’s fallintostars is an exception – it uses a heena attar distilled by M.L. Ramnarain.  (Review here).  

 

Gul Hina by Areej Le Doré is an entirely different experience to most Gul Hina attars I have tried.  The scent of mehndi attar is that of earth, hay, flower petals, ink, baked clay, and iodine.  (The ruh smells greener, with a  tobacco-ish facet).  It can smell rather austere.  But the Areej Le Doré approach to Gul Hina is to bathe the henna flower in the prettiest of magnolia blossoms, rose, and jasmine, so that what emerges is a sort of Venus on a Half Shell – a pearlescent, creamy, and indubitably feminine experience.  This is not the hot baked earth and hay that I am used to in mehndi.  And I’m not complaining.

 

It strikes me that this would be perfect for a bride, especially one that is also getting those intricate henna patterns painted onto her hands and face.  Henna on the arms and face; Gul Hina on the wrists and neck.  A synchronicity of henna for good health and a happy marriage.

 

First, Gul Hina smells vaguely candied, but indirectly so, like floral gummies rolled in dust and lint.  Then you notice the magnolia petals floating in a pool of cream.  Unlike in other takes on magnolia, there is no lemony freshness and no juicy, metallic greenery at its heart.  Here, the petals feel impregnated with the cream in which it floats, like biscuits or croissants dipped into condensed milk before baking a bread pudding.  These sweet, milky notes mingling with the clearly floral elements of magnolia remind me of some aspects of Remember Me (Jovoy).

 

The jasmine is next to break free of this creamy mass.  Clear as a bell, this is a naturalistic jasmine, like jasmine petals dropping and wilting off a vine in high summer.  Petals fully open, a ripe smell, with something fecund and though not quite clean, not exactly indolic either.  Still, it is enough to give the pretty magnolia some much-needed kick.  A little funk in your cream.  The rose, when it emerges, is extremely subtle.  Rose rarely plays such a back seat, but here it plays nicely in floral tandem with jasmine and magnolia that it approaches that ‘mixed floral bouquet’ effect that Creed puts in all its older feminines, like Vanisia and Fleurissimo.      

 

To be honest, I am not sure what to think about the far drydown.  With the white musk and the sandalwood, there is a nice element of perfumey, musky bitterness that creeps in.  On the one hand, this sort of drydown is always very pretty (think Coco Mademoiselle, without the patchouli), but on the other, it doesn’t sit well with the magnolia cream pudding aspect, which in consequence begins to smell a little less like a milky dessert and more like that fake croissant scent they pump around the supermarket to get shoppers moving towards the baked goods section.

 

But even if it is ultimately not quite my thing, I can’t imagine why Gul Hina wouldn’t be a huge success with brides to be, women who like pretty florals, and fans of milky floral gourmands in general.  Overall, I admire Gul Hina for being a symbolic scent pairing to the more pungent smell of henna ink painted onto a woman’s body on her wedding day.  It doesn’t smell like any mehndi attar I have ever smelled before, but my experience with mehndi is limited and I fully expect someone who is fully familiar with it to smell this and say, but of course, this is pure mehndi!

 

 

Source of samples:  My samples were sent free of charge by the brand.  This does not affect my review.

 

Cover Image: Photo by Fahrul Azmi on Unsplash 

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Amber Animalic Iris Leather Masculine Review

Cuir d’Iris by Parfumerie Generale

8th August 2022

 

The secret to Cuir d’Iris is that it is simultaneously sooty and wet.  Bone-dry cedarwood and iris kick up dust eddies as stale as the air from a newly-fired radiator.  Floating in this thick miasma is the scent of the milking shed, successive days of cow juice coagulating slowly on the concrete floor, soured slightly by the sun.  Wisps of charcoal or soot add a grainy dimension that might be interpreted as smoke of some sort.

 

Add to this Pierre Guillaume’s signature amber-musk combo that smells uniquely intimate, like the sweet, yeasty folds of skin under a baby’s neck or the two-day scalp of a loved one, and you have yourself a result that stands less with the Cuir de Russies and the Knize Tens of the world, and more with the L’Air de Riens.  And yet, step back, and this is still clearly leather – freshly cured, curdy, a bit raw and thin.

 

But leather is just skin after all.  And human skin is still animal skin.  In the series ‘Hannibal’, his therapist tells him that while she admires its construction, what he is wearing is a well-constructed person suit, suggesting that his humanity is something one can slip into (or out of) as easily as one would a pair of dress pants.  Cuir d’Iris, with its organic, lived-in human-ness, is the ultimate parfum de peau.  Robots and psychopaths, take note.     

 

 

Source of sample:  I bought my own bottle of Cuir d’Iris in 2015.  Many thanks to Danny C. who safeguarded it in London for two whole years before my brother was able to go pick it up.  

 

Cover Image:  Photo by Dainis Graveris on Unsplash  

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Amber Ambergris Animalic Carnation Musk Resins Review

Fiore d’Ambra by Profumum Roma

22nd June 2022

 

 

What I find disturbing about Fiore d’Ambra by Profumum Roma is that it is sweet and filthy in equal measure, like Youth Dew sprayed on a dirty crotch.  Unlike Ambra Aurea, which is immediately pleasant, Fiore d’Ambra mouths off at you in three different languages at once and gives you little time to catch up.  Best I can make out, the smell boils down to a particularly clovey stick of clove rock, sugar cubes soaked in antibiotics, and underneath, a stirring of some very unclean musks.  The combination is suggestive of both the pleasures of the headshop (musk cubes, unlit incense, dust) and of the faintly sour-sweet breath of unwashed ladybits that must have risen like yeast every time Henry VIII lifted a lady’s gown.

 

I love it.  I thumb my nose at anyone suggesting it is an amber, though.  Names are powerful things, but smell this without thinking of the ‘amber’ in the title or the fact that it sits right next to a similarly-named fragrance (Ambra Aurea) in the Profumum Roma catalogue, and you begin to see that its feral poop-fur quality aligns it far more closely with scents like Muscs Khoublai Khan (Serge Lutens), L’Air de Rien (Miller Harris), and L’Ombre Fauve (Parfumerie Generale) than with stuff like Ambre Sultan (Serge Lutens) or even Ambra Aurea.  

 

As an accord in perfumery, amber is both a comfort and a straitjacket.  On the one hand, the smoky-spicy sweetness of warm resins and vanilla never fails to hit, plugging into our dopamine receptors with the same ease as the smell of coffee first thing in the morning or something good in the oven when you’re hungry.   Amber cocoons you, satiating your basic appetite for warmth and richness.  It is the flannel pajamas of the scent world.

 

But there is not to distinguish between ambers – or if there is, it is a matter of minute variations to the left or the right of the same basic ambery accord.  Think of just how much really separates Ambra Aurea from an Amber Absolute (Tom Ford), say, or from an Ambre Sultan (Serge Lutens), or a Mitzah (Dior Privée).   Past a certain point, you’re just playing with varying degrees of sweetness (vanilla), powderiness (benzoin), leather or caramel (labdanum), smoke (incense) and the accoutrements of spice or herbs.  The result always smells good.  But does it smell interesting or original?  Hardly ever.

 

Now, Fiore d’Ambra innovates.  It doesn’t even really smell like amber to me, unless you count any sweet element at all – here a soda stream-Coca Cola syrupiness – as ‘amber’.  The ‘opium’ element, which has traditionally been interpreted in perfumery by way of eugenol – a substance that is almost as verboten as opium itself these days – has probably been built with clove oil instead.  But the perfumers didn’t even bother to lather it up into a soft froth with geranium or rose, so the clove note juts out of the topnotes like a sudden erection.  The musks are sensual, but raw and unclean (a bit salty even), strangely reminiscent of the dry honey-toner-ink accord from M/Mink (Byredo).

 

The minute I smelled Fiore d’Ambra, I was reminded of the vials of Fleur Poudrée de Musc (Les Nereides) that the Conor McTeague (aka Jtd), my friend and the best fragrance writer in the world, sent to a group of perfume friends around the world in early 2015.  I think he got enormous fun out of the collective recoil.  It smelled like the most innocent of baby powders combined with the foulest of human shits, a merry middle finger to the frou-frou Botticelli angels and Ye Olde Italian Script of the brand itself.  Conor wrote this of Fleur Poudrée de Musc:  “Have you ever undressed somebody after a long day of winter sport, all those layers amplifying the scent of skin that’s sweated then dried multiple times? Remember that scent, then imagine some powder on top”.  I don’t know if Conor ever smelled Fiore d’Ambra, but I like to think he might have described it in much the same way.  

 

 

 

Source of sample: I purchased my 18ml travel bottle of Fiore d’Ambra from the Profumum Roma store in Rome, March 2022.  It cost €55.

 

Cover Image: Photo by Inge Poelman on Unsplash 

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