A look at Marlou Parfum‘s 50 ml d’Ambiguïté (now known as Ambilux) and a brief, two-tweet glance at L’Animale Sauvage (now called Carnicure).

There was a lot of hype over both fragrances when they were released. D’Ambiguïté, as I call it, was especially popular and people commonly compared it to Serge Lutens Muscs Khoublai Khan, the great Kouros, and other popular animalic fragrances.

I had a different view of them.

Marlou released 50 ml d’Ambiguïté in 2017 before eventually renaming it as Ambilux. Some say that the fragrance was slightly changed, though not dramatically by any means, during its relaunch. My sample is from 2017.

(Review THREAD) 1. Marlou's "50 ml d'Ambiguïté," now known as Ambilux.

It's been compared to MKK, Kouros, & other animalics. Hmph.

Notes: Pink peppercorn, cumin, incense, ylang, dune plants, castoreum, costus.

Live-tweeting the #scent development & my thoughts #fragrance

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— Kafkaesque (@Kafkaesque_Blog) December 21, 2021

L’Animale Sauvage was released in 2016 went through the same situation when it was relaunched as Carnicure. My sample of the scent is also from 2017. I was so unenthused that my review essentially consisted of two tweets, one of which was a mere three sentences. That’s one of the joys of Twitter, by the way: when you don’t like something and feel no pressure to write a lengthy, detailed review as I did here, you can be as terse as Luca Turin is in his reviews.

Anyway, my L’Animale Sauvage / Carnicure synopsis:

2nd hour sees a surge in civet, giving L'Animale some very mild Lutens MKK attributes along with the iris-y, abstract orange blossom, powdery, talc-like skin muskiness. Vintage "old lady" claims make sense. Hay, vanilla-woody facets, too.

My throat is scratchier than ever, alas.

— Kafkaesque (@Kafkaesque_Blog) December 11, 2021

I gave up on L’Animale Sauvage / Carnicure a few hours after that. It wasn’t so much the physical discomfort of the synthetics so much as the fact that I was bored silly and unmoved.

However, I’m not one for powdery scents or anything that replicates talcum or baby powder, so your mileage may vary. If you like powdery scents and animalics, maybe these two would be worth your time. Maybe. (I’m trying to be nice.)

If you like sweet, warm, powdery, quietly animalic body musk fragrances, you’d do better to wait for me to finish my Francesca Bianchi Under My Skin review because that had everything promised in these fragrances and more.