Élisire Ambre Nomade

Posted on April 11, 2015 by Kafkaesque

Source: listofimages.com

Imagine sunset on a distant island called Ambre Nomade. As the air hangs thick and heavy with gold warmth, ocean waves ripple upon the island’s dark, hulking cliffs made from thick, solid labdanum. Each wave brings new adventures and nomadic smells, starting first with fresh aromatics from rosemary, lavender and sage. The next is apple, followed by ginger, woods, and vanilla, each one taking turns to transform the island mass, each one ebbing and flowing, creating constant sea changes, never the same way twice. As the sun sets, high tide gives way to a darker and simpler picture where the amber is sultan over his domain, surrounded by aromatic herbal courtiers and vanilla handmaidens, all speaking in hushed voices in his mighty golden presence. This is now a familiar tale, told often and long ago, but it is still a beautiful one, marked by richness and opulence. It’s the story of Ambre Nomade, and the narrator is Élisire.

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Amouage Badr Al Badour & Molook Attars

Posted on April 10, 2015 by Kafkaesque

“Scheherazade” by Alberto Vargas, 1921. Source: cataxe.com

Sensual secrets inspired by Scheherazade in The Thousand and One Nights, and a King who speaks of passion through tender roses and oud — those are the inspirations for Amouage’s Badr Al Badour and Molook. At the heart of one of them is a rose note that might as well be a signature of Amouage’s attars, a rose like no other, a rose that somehow manages to improve on Nature in a way that feels almost heretical. Amouage’s attars take perfumery to dizzying heights, but all of them have now been discontinued. As I wrote a while back, I want to pay homage to these lost masterpieces, much as one would write a tribute to Leonardo Da Vinci’s Last Supper, covering as many as I can out of the samples I have left. And I’m happy to say that I’ve found a few places that still carry a rare bottle or two of the attars which will be the focus of today’s review.

Amouage’s attars. Source: adjiumi.it

BADR AL BADOUR:

Amouage has no official description or note list for Badr Al Badour on its website, but one of the few stores that still carries the attar, Profumeria Pepos in Italy, has the old text:

Scheherazade by Leon Bakst (1866 – 1924). Source: imgarcade.com

Bard Al Badour is inspired by the beauty of a woman told in a famous story “The Thousand and One Nights.” Full of sensuality, its species were selected to evoke unnerving and secret pleasures. Drops of Rosa Damascena and tears of Ambergris are the prelude to a dream-erotic aroma that magnetizes the head notes. A fluctuating moment of vibrant intensity that explodes in a heart filled with three types of wood, Oudh, Burmese and Cambodian. A visceral love tribute to the aroma that most of all recounts the east.

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Laboratorio Olfattivo Patchouliful

Posted on April 8, 2015 by Kafkaesque

“Black and Gold Yin Yang” by Dynamicz34 on DeviantArt.com. (Website link embedded within.)

“The Happy Hippie King” in a bright Hawaiian shirt, smiling and affable in his patchouli warmth. The sweetness of white flowers, laced with darkness and spices, then encased in amber. Those are two very different images, but they are both parts of Patchouliful, a paradoxical scent that starts out as one thing before transitioning into another. It’s almost as if the fragrance were split in two, first echoing a true patchouli scent like Santa Maria Novella‘s Patchouli before turning into a very close replica of the orange blossom, tobacco, myrrh fragrance inspired by George Sand, Jardins d’Ecrivains‘ George. Regardless of the split focus (or identity), all of it is beautifully done with Italian polish in a smooth, high quality, and very appealing scent from a house that has really piqued my interest.

Roberto Drago of Laboratorio Ollfativo and Jacques Zolty via YouTube.

Roberto Drago of Laboratorio Olfattivo and Jacques Zolty via YouTube.

Patchouliful is an eau de parfum from Laboratorio Olfattivo, an Italian house based in Rome that was founded in 2010 by Roberto Drago. We saw his hand yesterday in Van-ile, the wonderful vanilla scent from Jacques Zolty, a brand which Mr. Drago took over in 2014. So far, I’m impressed with the results of his creative direction because all the things he puts out are very wearable, easygoing, good quality, and reasonably priced. (A third fragrance called Kashnoir that I hope to review soon caught my breath as a wonderful cousin to vintage Shalimar with all the latter’s former smooth beauty, and none of the hideous screeching synthetics of the modern version.)

Source: Fragrantica.

Spicy, brown patchouli isn’t always the easiest note for people and it has a terrible reputation left over from the 1970s, which may be one reason why Mr. Drago did not want Patchouliful to be a hardcore soliflore, but a refined, “bright” interpretation where the main note ebbs and flows like a wave, and where the scent as a whole feels like “The Happy Hippie King.” On its website, Laboratorio Olfattivo has a long description of the scent, but it is in Italian with no English counterpart. However, Mr. Drago spoke in detail about the scent in an interview with Fragrantica, and I think his comments are significant. For one thing, they accurately describe Patchouliful’s unusual movement on my skin. Long before I ever read that interview, my notes for Patchouliful are filled with references to how the patchouli waxes and wanes like a wave, often playing peekaboo and feeling almost like a mirage at times in the opening moments. Apparently, all of that was intentional:

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Jacques Zolty Van-ile: Delicious Simplicity

Posted on April 7, 2015 by Kafkaesque

Photo & Source: The Kitchen McCabe. (Direct website link embedded within.)

Move over Tihota, I’ve found something else. Van-ile is almost as good, but costs much less. Imagine airy vanilla, wrapped up with ribbons of lemon, tangy orange, orchid floralcy, and clean musk in a silky cloud that soon turns into the delicious coziness of silky, cake batter-style vanilla made from expensive Tahitian beans. That’s the essence of Van-ile (officially spelt as “Van-île”), an extremely simple, unpretentious eau de parfum that bears a strong resemblance to Indult‘s famous Tihota for almost all of its life, only for a third of the price. It’s a soft, easy-to-wear scent that is so appealing, I bought a bottle for myself. It helps that Van-ile is very reasonably priced, especially for the quality in question, and I’m a sucker for a good deal. More than that, though, it’s been extremely difficult for me to find a vanilla that is neither so sweet it would trigger a diabetic coma nor too heavily imbued with the ghastly white musk that I loathe. Van-ile fits the bill.

Jacques Zolty. Source: fless.ru

Let’s start at the beginning, though, since Jacques Zolty is probably not a name with which you’re familiar. I certainly wasn’t. According to Fragrantica, he was a French supermodel in the 1970s and then, in 2007, founded a perfume house whose creations celebrated the smell, culture, and vibe of the island of St. Bart’s in the West Indies. In 2014, the brand was bought by Roberto Drago, the owner of Laboratorio Olfattivo. He asked Cecile Zakorian (creator of Masque’s Tango, Majda Bekkali’s Mon Nom Est Rouge, Jovoy’s Private Label, and other fragrances) to make two new scents for the line, and one of them was Van-ile.

Vanilla orchid flower via imgarcade.com

Van-ile is an eau de parfum that was released in late 2014. According to First in Fragrance, its name is a play on “vanille (vanilla) and île (island)… in French, the native language of Saint-Barthélemy. This fragrance is a passionate homage to vanilla planifolia, the sugar orchid that grows up symbiotically with the sun in the Caribbean and makes life sweeter on the most beautiful and glamourous island in the Antilles.” The perfume’s notes are:

Top Note: Bergamot, Orange, Almond
Heart Note: Vanilla, Heliotrope, Frangipani, Jasmine, Patchouly, Powdery Notes
Base Note: Vanilla Bean, Leather, Animalic Notes, Oakmoss, Musk

Source: cecilezarokian.com/fr/wins

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