Six fragrances ranging from leather wrapped in incense and vetiver, to chocolate lava cake, amber roses, incense laced with green herbs and powdered roses, and green white florals splattered with chunks of juicy fruits — these are some of the bouquets represented by six creations from La Via del Profumo and AbdesSalaam Attar. Each fragrance caught my attention or stood out for some reason or another during the recent perfume seminar I attended in Italy. They are: Amber Rose, Amber Chocolate, Acqua di Angelica, Grezzo d’Eleganza, Tasneem/Tasnim, and Oasis. I’ll look at each one in turn, and provide comparative reviews whenever possible.
Category Archives: Gourmand fragrances
Tauer, Tom Ford, Euphorium Brooklyn, Morph & Elisire
I’ve tried a number of fragrances that didn’t work for me over the last eight months, but not all of them were actually bad scents. Although I scrubbed all of them off, a few were things that I actually think some of you might like quite a bit. The problem in each case (for me) was that the fragrance had one or more elements which pushed one of my hot button issues, and did so in a way that not only felt imbalanced but, quite frequently, also made the scents physically difficult to test.
Perfume reviewing is a wholly subjective thing that is dependent on individual tastes, experiences, and skin chemistry, but it’s not easy to write about scrubbers in exhaustive detail, one after another. (And I’ve gone through a lot of scrubbers in the last 8 months that I haven’t talked about.) For many of the fragrances mentioned in this post, I lacked the heart and will to write thousands of words for one of my usual reviews, and didn’t want to cover them even in one of my short(er) Reviews en Bref because I wasn’t keen to relive the experience. Yet, as I said, some of you might like a few of the fragrances quite a bit — like the new Cilice from Euphorium Brooklyn which should appeal to lovers of dark, smoky, woody, and campfire fragrances. Two of the scents are things that I would sincerely recommend to people with a very particular taste set to try for themselves.
Cilice from Euphorium Brooklyn. Source: Twisted Lily.
Review En Bref: Serge Lutens Gris Clair
My Reviews en Bref are always for scents that, for whatever reason, may not warrant one of my more exhaustive, detailed assessments. Today, it’s for Gris Clair, a Serge Lutens fragrance that I found utterly unbearable all five times that I tried it over the last seven months.
Source: Luckyscent.
Gris Clair is a lavender-centric eau de parfum created by Christopher Sheldrake and released nine years ago in 2006. The Serge Lutens website describes the scent in the usual abstract terms:
“Like pollen blowing over a lifeless city.
As grey as ashes floating through a sky of sunbeams. Lavender, then, to add grey to clarity, I added incense. I’m crazy about it! In every sense, incense makes sense to my senses.” Serge Lutens
Serge Lutens always keeps the note list secret, but Luckyscent guesses Gris Clair includes:
lavender, amber, tonka bean, iris, dry wood, incense.
Source: de.wallpaperswiki.org
Dior Fève Délicieuse (La Collection Privée)
Many of the Dior Privée fragrances are an ode to a particular ingredient, highlighting its beauty with few other distractions. Mitzah focused on labdanum amber, Ambre Nuit on ambergris, Patchouli Imperial on the titular note, and Leather Oud on leather. The simplicity and occasional linearity of the scents are a trade-off for polished compositions with elegant fluidity where the notes slip one into the other with seamless ease. Dior’s latest release, Fève Délicieuse, is no different. The perfume’s name means “delicious bean,” and the focus is ostensibly on the tonka bean. In my opinion, however, it is a different, delicious bean that is being showcased, the vanilla one, though tonka does play a large supporting role.
Source: dior-s.neolane.net
Fève Délicieuse (hereinafter just “Feve Delicieuse” without the accents for reasons of speed and convenience) is an eau de parfum from Dior‘s prestige line of fragrances called La Collection Privée. The fragrance was created by François Demarchy, the artistic director and nose for Parfums Dior. Dior categorizes the fragrance as a gourmand, and provides the following description:
Woven around a Venezuelan Tonka Bean Absolute, this composition by Dior Perfumer-Creator François Demachy literally ravishes the senses. Drawn by the “immediate seduction” of this ingredient, François Demachy wanted to create a personalized representation of the Tonka Bean. An exercise in composition that plays on contrasts by celebrating both its sweetness and its delectable touch of bitterness. The warm and slightly smoky notes of Madagascan Vanilla were combined with the Tonka Bean to complete the evocative sensation of delight…
While other sites add caramel, praline, white woods, and sometimes cocoa to the list of notes, Dior itself says that the perfume contains only:
Calabrian Bergamot, Tonka Bean Absolute, Madagascar Vanilla.