Elephant & Roses and Syconium are two very different fragrances from the Italian niche brand, Maria Candida Gentile. The former layers roses with grassy, animalic, or clean elements, while the latter covers sandalwood with figs then dunks them both in a mix of milk and honey. I’ll look at each fragrance in turn.
Category Archives: Orientals
Diptyque Benjoin Boheme
“Light & Color, the morning after the deluge,” by J.M.W. Turner via Pinterest.
Benjoin Boheme, the latest fragrance from Diptyque, calls to mind a Turner landscape painted in a palette of nut-browns, gold, cream, and silver, then edged in smoky shadows. The light is so soft and warm, it seems to ripple out from the canvas to envelop you with soothing, gentle comfort. The perfectly placed shadows merely underscore the warmth, the glowing cloud that invites you to dive in, to let yourself be enveloped, and to just relax. Diptyque is not a brand that does much for me as a general rule, but Benjoin Boheme makes me look at them in a new light. Colour me impressed.
Reviews En Bref: Dasein Autumn & Winter
With the end of autumn and the advent of winter in the Western hemisphere, it seemed like a fitting time to cover seasonal fragrances from the American niche brand, Dasein. It is an artisanal perfume house founded by Samantha (or “Sam”) Rader in Los Angeles in 2014. According to her biography, she is “a self-taught mixed-media perfumer,” and all her fragrances are unisex, vegan eau de parfums that she hand-blends in small batches. There are four releases thus far, each named after a different season of the year. Today, I’ll take a brief look at Autumn and Winter.
Serge Lutens Cannibale
Art by Mark Molnar via creativebloq.com (Direct website link embedded within.)
Smoky leather corseted by frankincense, then enveloped in resinous amber, spicy patchouli, and fiery cloves lies at the heart of Cannibale, one of Serge Lutens‘ new parfums in his Section d’Or Collection. It’s a fragrance that took me all over the place. Images of wild tribal dances around smoky fires competed with flashbacks to France’s Madame Pompadour and the powdered aristocrats of the ancien regime wearing old-fashioned rice powder and acidic floral vinegars at Versailles. Those flashbacks were later replaced by flashforwards in time to modern niche hits like Mona di Orio‘s Cuir, Annick Goutal‘s Ambre Fetiche, and Tom Ford‘s Amber Absolute (or its tweaked parallel version, Sahara Noir).
And, throughout it all, there were loud reverberations of several past Lutens‘ creations, first and foremost Serge Noire, then Ambre Sultan and L’Incendiaire. At times, parts of Cannibale drew me in appreciatively before another element repelled me, sometimes making me recoil quite literally. There were also glimmers of the old Luten’ innovative whimsy and originality, but they occurred early on, before being drowned out entirely by a bouquet that made me feel I was wearing fragrances from other brands. When you spend a small chunk of time mentally cataloguing all the possible amber, leather, and Serge Noire combinations that could create the same scent — one bearing a far higher price tag than those individual parts — then I think there is a problem.