Atelier Cologne Rose Anonyme

Posted on January 26, 2014 by Kafkaesque

Rose Anonyme via the Atelier website.

There are some houses that simply leave you cold, generating an apathetic indifference at best, and a raging dislike the rest of the time. Atelier Cologne is one of those for me, a brand that I find whiter than rice a good portion of the time with perfectly serviceable fragrances that are burdened by an incredibly mundane, safe, pedestrian character. For me, they never stand out except, on occasion, in the absolute worst way possible. (A future review for Mistral Patchouli will make that very clear.) A few Atelier scents (like Orange Sanguine) have brief moments that are utterly gorgeous, but all of them inevitably devolve into an incredibly boring, linear singularity marked by a signature accord that drives me insane. Rose Anonyme is one of the most beloved in the line, and it is one of the better Atelier fragrances that I’ve tried. The scale is wholly relative, however, and “better” for Atelier Cologne means very little in my view in an absolute sense.

Atelier Cologne was started in 2010 by founders and romantic partners, Sylvie Ganter and Christophe Cervasel. It is the first fragrance house entirely dedicated to fragrances in the classic cologne formulation. As many perfumistas know, eau de cologne is typically the mildest, weakest form of fragrance, so the creators decided to take it one step beyond. They created a whole new formulation of perfumery called the Cologne Absolue which seeks to amplify the freshness of a cologne with the longevity of an eau de parfum through the use of a much higher percentage of essential oils. Instead of using the usual 5%-7% levels, Atelier injects between 12% to 18% fragrance oils in their creations, while still maintaining a certain freshness. In my opinion, they achieve the latter through what seems to be a signature base accord of soapy, clean, fresh white musk. It is a signature that I’ve found in all their scents, and one which perpetually gives me a headache. More importantly, it smells bloody cheap.

Rose Anonyme, 30 ml bottle via Amazon.

Rose Anonyme was created by Jérome Epinette, and released in 2012. It is an eau de cologne absolue that contains 18% concentrated perfume oils, a level which is akin to that of some eau de parfums. Atelier Cologne describes the scent quite simply:

Rose Anonyme, a breathtaking seductress caught in a stolen affair between light and dark, Turkish Rose Absolute sparkles and intrigues beneath notes of spicy Ginger, enwrapped in sultry veil of Velvet Oud, Indonesian Patchouli, mystic Papyrus and Somalian Incense.

Atelier says that the full list of notes is:

Calabrian bergamot, Chinese ginger, Turkish rose essence, Turkish rose absolue, Somali incense, velvet oud accord, Indonesian patchouli, Indian papyrus, benzoin from Laos.

Source: nature.desktopnexus.com

Rose Anonyme opens on my skin with a rose turned jammy and concentrated with the vile, dreaded, purple fruit-chouli. It is syrupy, excessively sweet, and smells strongly of grapes and fruit molasses. The duo are infused with a brief pop of crisp bergamot and, more importantly a whole lot of an arid, acrid papyrus. The latter smells both like ancient parchment paper and something wholly aroma-chemical in nature. Moments later, a soft, emasculated “oud” arrives, followed by the lightest whisper of candied ginger. Deep in the base, there are traces of a soapy tonality.

The whole thing is oddly acrid, jammy, syrupy, soft, intense, and candied, all at once. There are definite resemblances at this point to Tom Ford‘s Noir de Noir in the richness of the blood-red rose infused with a grapey darkness, purple patchouli, and the merest flicker of muffled oud. However, the Tom Ford fragrance feels infinitely more luxurious, rich, deep, and smooth. It has no jangly rough edges, or notes of aroma-chemical aridity. It is also not cloying sweet, as the purple patchouli is much better calibrated. Later, as Rose Anonyme develops, it loses that kinship even more, as Noir de Noir takes on a powdered, violet quality that makes the fragrance resemble Turkish Delight.

Papyrus plant via wikicommons.

In a number of perfumes, the attempt to create a “papyrus” impression is done through the use of something called Cypriol, an essential oil (or, sometimes, a synthetic) derived from the roots of the Cyperus scariosus plant. The latter is known in English as cypriol and in Hindi as Nagarmotha, and it is a member of the papyrus family. (You can read more about it on The Perfume Shrine‘s analysis of cypriol.) The only reason why I’m bringing it up here is many fragrances that claim to have “oud” really don’t. Andy Tauer argues that the vast majority just use a drop of “oudh” in a cypriol base. On his blog, he once wrote:

Often, “oudh” is used as a tag allowing brands to charge more because somehow everybody seems to think that perfume lovers are willing to pay extra for a fragrance with oudh notes. This does not make sense as there is not much oudh in anything. Yet, consumers pay the extra$$$ and are told that they get the exclusive fragrance with this expensive ingredient. This is wrong.

Apart from a drop or two, the rest of the “oudh” is bases, often with cypriol, in varying qualities, far away from the “real thing”. The real thing does not find its way into perfumes that you buy in your perfumery.

Atelier Cologne has the honesty to admit that Rose Anonyme only contains a “velvet oud accord,” but given the inclusion of “papyrus” and the way that particular note smells on my skin, I’d bet the whole thing is one laboratory-driven concoction. You definitely smell “papyrus” in Rose Anonyme, but if you’re expecting a significant oud aroma — let alone a genuine one — you’ll be sorely disappointed. On my skin, Rose Anonyme is merely fluctuating degrees of jammy rose infused with purple fruit-chouli and synthetic, acrid “papyrus.” And I cannot tell you how sick to death I am of fragrances that are essentially rose-patchouli soliflores.

Source: dultmeier.com

The things that comes to mind repeatedly in the opening hour of Rose Anonyme are candy and soap. The richest, gooey-est, chewy, almost grapey candy sitting side by site with a bar of floral soap, close enough for the candy to pick up its small traces. The two are wrapped in a dry, acrid-smelling paper that almost has a grassy whisper to it. Something about the scent gives me a headache, though I’m not sure if it’s from the cloying sweetness or the cheap white musk that I find in so many Atelier scents. It is a synthetic cleanness that is always soapy at its core and, in this particular case, smells like really strong, sweetened, car freshener aerosol. If you’ve ever gone to a car wash and gotten the “rose” spray option for the inside of your vehicle, you’ll know a bit of what I mean.

Fruit molasses or jam. Source: Shutterstock.com

The sweetness is intense, though I blame some of that on my skin. It always amplifies base notes, including anything sweet, and purple patchouli in particular. That said, I’ve noticed that the more you apply of Rose Anonyme, the worse it gets. With 2 sprays from my tiny atomizer or the equivalent of one good spray from a bottle, the sweetness is far too excessive for my personal tastes, but not so much as to make me want to scrub off the perfume. With 3 tiny sprays, however, amounting to 2 sprays from a proper bottle, the perfume is utterly unbearable. And there is no escape from it either, because Rose Anonyme initialy wafts a good 4-5 inches (regardless of quantity) in a dense cloud of rose jamminess.

Thirty minutes in, Rose Anonyme is a syrupy rose patchouli scent, with a subtle note of biting dryness and aridity, and the merest suggestion of some eunuch, emasculated “oud.” Unfortunately for me, it is now also trumpeting that Atelier signature of clean, fresh musk which always gives me a headache. Ignoring my personal sensitivity to white musk, I always find the note to have such an incredibly cheap feel. Any number of generic, mainstream, $50 floral scents in Sephora have it, perhaps because it is a way to comply with the modern mania for “freshness” at little to no cost to the manufacturer.

Speaking of Sephora, Atelier Cologne is now carried there, which says something. And the line has increased its prices so that the small 1 oz bottle now costs $75. Atelier may pretend to be “niche,” but it really is not. Plus, Rose Anonyme has a wholly generic, pedestrian profile that imitates a million other boring rose-patchouli-white musk scents also carried at Sephora. The degree of my boredom knows no bounds.

Source: hqwallbase.com

Rose Anonyme is an extremely linear scent. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that if you like the notes in question, but, in this case, I don’t. The main changes in the perfume are one of degree. The sillage drops after 90 minutes, and the perfume feels softer, more pillowy, though it is still diabetically sweet. It is a candied rose-fruitchouli scent with a miniscule drop of bergamot atop a dry papyrus base that feels peppered and a bit acrid. The whole thing is nestled in a cocoon of fresh cleanness. None of it smells opulent, luxe, rich or special to me. The blasted concoction turns into a skin scent after 4 hours, and continues on its singular path with all the determination of a red bulldozer. I’m so utterly bored, I contemplate making a list of how many scents out there might have been a model for Atelier to copy, but there are too many choices.

The one saving grace to this endless stream of banality is Rose Anonyme’s final drydown. In its last two hours, it turns into a genuinely pretty blend of a soft, dusty rose-patchouli dusted with chocolate powder. It’s lovely, and I wish it had been the dominant heart of the annoying scent. All in all, Rose Anonyme lasted 12.5 hours with 3 small sprays from the atomizer, and 10.25 with 2 smaller ones. I gave it two full, proper, focused tests, but I’ve also worn it a few times prior just casually for myself. (Only to scrub it off after 2 hours. That syrupy sweetness is revoltingly excessive on my skin.)

My feelings about Rose Anonyme are very, very far from the common consensus on the fragrance. It seems to tie with Orange Sanguine as many people’s favorite from the line. I concede fully that skin chemistry, amplification of the purple patchouli, my dislike of the note and of white musk, and my leeriness of rose scents are all to blame. However, I refuse to change my stance on Rose Anonyme’s utterly generic, common profile. And I point to Fragrantica where the (admittedly very positive) discussion of Rose Anonyme brings up a plethora of comparable fragrances. First and foremost, Juliet Has A Gun‘s Midnight Oud. Other names that come up are Tom Ford’s Noir de Noir, Montale Red Aoud, Thierry Mugler‘s Angel La Rose, Thierry Mugler‘s Amen line, Sisley Lune or de Soir, New York Oud, and several others.

Yet, Fragrantica commentators seem to overwhelmingly adore the softness and sweetness of Rose Anonyme. Even those who note the perfume’s linearity, its soapy quality, or the “synthetic” “metallic musk, love it. The one wholly negative review comes from “Sherapop,” who had great difficulty with the papyrus element:

Atelier Cologne ROSE ANONYME “cologne absolue” (isn’t that an oxymoron?) opens with a striking resemblance to Thierry Mugler Jardin d’Etoiles entry ANGEL LA ROSE. The first word out of my mouth was actually: patchouli. Then the rose swept in and I felt as though I really was wearing the Mugler flanker for a couple of minutes.

ROSE ANONYME continues to develop, however. What I perceive next is the emergence of a very strong and dominant papyrus note. Because focal papyrus is rare in my experience of perfumes, I have a very strong memory of it, and it appears most markedly of all in Jessica Simpson FANCY NIGHTS. I’d thought that the reason why I did not take to that perfume was because it was a vat-produced Parlux juice. Now, after sniffing ROSE ANONYME, I think that it must be the papyrus which makes me less than enthused about that perfume, too.

It took me a couple of minutes to figure out what exactly it was that I was smelling, but once I did, the connection to FANCY NIGHTS seemed unmistakeable.

One negative review, and that’s it. So, I’m clearly in the minority, and that’s fine. I find Atelier’s stuff dull as soapy dishwater, but Rose Anonyme is obviously everyone else’s rose candy.

If you like Juliet Has A Gun fragrances or are looking for a very jammy, lush, slightly clean rose scent, then you may want to give Rose Anonyme a try. It has an extremely emasculated (read, virtually non-existent) oud accord, but Atelier compensates by providing instead quite a bit of dry papyrus. It’s not enough to counter the diabolical intensity of the fruit-chouli, but that seems to be what makes the rose note so “velvety” in most people’s eyes. The perfume is definitely unisex (men seem to adore it), and has good longevity. However, I’d be extremely careful with the quantity that you apply if you want to wear Rose Anonyme to work. Also, if you have any issues with clean white musks, you may want to test the perfume first. However, if you’re not a lover of rose-fruitchouli or syrupy sweetness, then you can join me in the pariah’s corner and we can yawn ourselves to sleep.

DETAILS:

Cost & Availability: Rose Anonyme is a concentrated cologne that comes in 3 sizes: 1 oz/30 ml for $75, 3.3 oz/100 ml for $130; and a giant 6.7 oz/200 ml for $195. You can buy Rose Anonyme directly from the Atelier Cologne website. In terms of freebies, if you buy the massive 6.7 oz bottle, the company says it will give you: “a travel spray refilled with the Cologne Absolue of your choice in its leather pouch engraved with your name or initials.” The travel spray is, in fact, the 30 ml/1 oz bottle. The company also sells various Gift and Travel Sets, such as a refillable 1 oz/30 ml travel size in a box with soap, postcards, leather pouch, etc. starting at $95 for Rose Anonyme, or a travel box of 7 travel minis that are each 7.5 ml for prices starting at $95. The company sells samples (in a set of all their 11 perfumes in small vials for $20), a $3 sample of Rose Anonyme, candles, and more. I can’t find shipping information or costs. As a side note, Atelier has a few shops: at least one in Paris, and also one in New York. In the U.S.: You can find Rose Anonyme at Sephora, Luckyscent, BeautyBar, Neiman Marcus, Birchbox, and Bergdorf Goodman (which also carries soap and candle forms). Outside the U.S.: In Canada, you can find it on Sephora.Canada at prices starting at CAD$80 for the small 1 oz bottle, CAD$135 for the large 3.3 oz bottle, and CAD$205 for the massive 6.7 oz bottle. In France, you can find Orange Sanguine at Sephora.Fr for €60,50 for the small 1 oz/30 ml bottle and €100 for the 3.3 oz/100 ml bottle. Other Sephoras may also carry it, though I didn’t see it on some like Sephora Mexico or Singapore. You can use the International Sephora site to look up the branch near you, from Greece to Spain. In France, Les Galleries also carries the Atelier line. In the UK, you can find Rose Anonyme at Selfridges where prices start at £100 for the 100 ml/3.3 oz size bottle. Liberty London and Les Senteurs only have the giant 200 ml size, but the latter sells samples. In the Netherlands, the Atelier line is carried at Skin Cosmetics, in Germany at First in Fragrance or Essenza Nobile. For all other countries, you can use the Store Vendor locator on the Atelier website to find retailers near you. Atelier Cologne fragrances are sold by vendors from Etiket in Canada to those in Tokyo, Shanghai, Poland, Italy, Russia, Romania and more. However, I couldn’t find any sites in Australia or the Middle East listed on the company website. Samples: a number of the vendors listed above have samples for sale. Surrender to Chance sells vials starting at $3 for 1 ml.

Aftelier Perfumes Cepes and Tuberose: Earthy Tuberose

Posted on January 23, 2014 by Kafkaesque

As it might be clear by now, I’m focusing on florals this week with a series that began by looking at various treatments of tuberose. Like Goldilocks, we’re exploring the range from the fresh, green kind represented by Carnal Flower to the warmer, creamier interpretation of Moon Bloom, and, now, the darkest one of all. This last one is a wholly original, incredibly creative twist on the great white flower, turning it earthy with all the mushrooms and earth of the forest floor. It is Cepes and Tuberose (sometimes written as “Cepes & Tuberose” by others), a perfume with very woody, resinous, chocolate, cinnamon and dried rose elements to go along with the mushrooms.

Cepes or Porcini. Source: morelmushroomhunting.com

Cepes and Tuberose was created by the highly respected, acclaimed all-natural perfumer, Mandy Aftel of Aftelier Perfumes. The perfume is classified as a fougère, which is a type of fragrance centered, in part, around herbs, along with more significant core components. Ms. Aftel has cleverly twisted the fresh, aromatic, herbal genre by taking a very different approach to the forest and mixing it with very different flowers. The critical component, however, are the cepes, a type of mushroom commonly referred to outside of France by its other name, porcini. Cepes and Tuberose comes in two concentrations: an eau de parfum concentration and in pure parfum. This review is for the former, the eau de parfum.

Cepes and Tuberose, the bottle for the Eau de Parfum version. Source: the Aftelier website.

On her website, Ms. Aftel describes Cepes and Tuberose as follows:

Scent Family: Fougère
Wild mushrooms, with animal undertones and one of the world’s most voluptuous florals. Wild porcini mushrooms and Italian tuberose play a mysterious and earthy duet. One of my more enigmatic perfumes, it has won many awards and fans. — Chosen as one of “100 Perfumes Every Perfumista Should Try” by Now Smell This.

Featured Notes
Top: bois de rose.
Heart: tuberose, Moroccan rose.
Base: cepes [or Porcini mushroom] absolute, benzoin.

Source: Ronny Fein. (Website link embedded within photo.)

Cepes and Tuberose opens on my skin with notes that strongly resemble sticky raisins, cinnamon infused fruits stewed in brown sugar molasses, and woods. There is also a very animalic leather component, followed by a truffle-like earthiness, then actual mushrooms with a hint of chocolate. The sweetened, plump, raisin molasses is infused with dark green herbs, aromatic but slightly smoky woods, and a mossy pungency. Within minutes, the latter takes on a medicinal, old-fashioned fougère tonality that has a very distant kinship to barber shops of old. Unlike those scents, however, Cepes and Tuberose is both sweetened and earthy.

Source: 123rf.com

The earthiness is interesting. Initially, it really feels more like humus (not hummus) which is the soil detritus of plants, dirt, leaves, and decaying organic matter. The mushroom tonality is subtle at first, more a suggestion than full-on porcinis. As regular readers know, one of my favorite discoveries last year was Oriza L. Legrand‘s ode to the forest floor, Chypre Mousse, an extremely green, mossy, mushroom, wet leaf and humus scent with herbal undertones, darkened resins and a wisp of leather. I love both the mushroom and earth note in Chypre Mousse, but it smells very different in Cepes and Tuberose. Here, it is not like sweet, loamy, wet soil, but a very dry one. There is sweetness, but it is of a brown sugar sap variety. Nothing in Cepes and Tuberose feels green or elfish, but dark, resinous, dry, and sweet. And the sense of something herbal, elemental and decayed feels much stronger here.

Source: Diary of a Mad Hausfrau. (Website link embedded within photo.)

The rosewood adds a distinct element of dark, smoky woods, but also something that resembles pine sap. It’s a warm, not chilled, version of the note in Serge Lutens‘ Fille en Aiguilles. Actually, the Lutens fragrance that Cepes and Tuberose first brought to mind was Bois et Fruits. I think it’s due to the sticky raisin and spice accords, mixed with more autumnal woods. Yet, Cepes and Tuberose is much more leathered than either of those fragrances. It has a definite animalic component in the sense of muskiness, but it is never fecal, raw, sweaty or rank. It is more earthen, and infused with a sweetness that borders on cinnamon and chocolate.

10 minutes in, Cepes and Tuberose starts to change. The fragrance feels less medicinal, herbal, and animalic. The leather note fades to the background, while the earthy one turns more mushroomy. There is a surprising meatiness to it that made me think of Portobello mushrooms, but at this stage, it’s still only a mere suggestion. The more significant change is the introduction of the florals, and this is where I start to really struggle. On my skin, the flowers are dominated by an amorphous, rose note that strongly resembles spiced, dried, pressed rose petals and potpourri. I’m not generally a fan of roses, fresh or dried, but I have particular problems with potpourri.

“Dried Rose Petals” by Tom Mc Nemar via Fineartamerica.
http://fineartamerica.com/featured/dried-rose-petals-ii-tom-mc-nemar.html

As time goes by, the rose potpourri takes over Cepes and Tuberose’s bouquet on my skin. The perfume smells increasingly like a very woody take on heavily spiced, cinnamon-dusted dried rose petals with an earthy humus note. Alas for me, the latter soon turns into hardcore porcini mushrooms, to a degree that Chypre Mousse never did. Actually, to be more precise, I smell like meaty, cooked portobellos dusted with cinnamon. The herbal green element has faded, though a certain pungency remains. The leathery note feels less musky, the raisins and brown sugar resin both weaken, and so does that subtle impression of pine. Their place is taken by a pinch of sweetened floral powder, presumably from the benzoin mingling with the roses.

I never once detected tuberose in its traditional, usual way. Instead, what slowly weaves its way through the notes is something that smells like a very browned gardenia. It strongly resembles the decayed gardenia in Serge Lutens‘ Un Voix Noire. As many of you know, gardenia is one of those flowers whose smell can’t really be captured from the petals, whose scent cannot be distilled, and whose aroma has to be recreated using other essential oils. (Fragrantica has a tiny bit on this issue if you’re interested.) Tuberose is one of the ways to recreate the smell of the gardenia, which may account for why the version in Cepes and Tuberose smells more like the latter than the former on my skin. Plus, gardenias naturally have a mushroomy scent when they are very ripe or close to the edge of decay.

Source: mydecorative.com

On my skin, the browned “gardenia” is perhaps the most tertiary of notes, and everything is trumped by the cinnamon-infused dried roses. The cepes are like a Jack in the Box, popping up on occasion to say “Boo” before sinking back down. They feel less meaty at the end of the first hour, and are more dirt-covered with the lightest touch of a mossy undertone. None of it is easy for me, though I enjoy the new arrival on the scene: cocoa. The initial hint of something chocolate-like in the base has now risen to the surface, but it resembles semi-sweet, dry cocoa powder more than an actual block of heavy chocolate.

At the start of the second hour, Cepes and Tuberose is a bouquet of cinnamon-rose potpourri with coca-dusted dry woods on the surface, while a dark, decayed white floral and meaty portobello mushrooms lurk down below. It is simultaneously dry, dirty, dusty, sweet, sharp, spiced, pungent and soft — contradictory as some of those things may sound. It isn’t the easiest of scents for me, though I had a moment of hope about 1.75 hours into Cepes and Tuberose’s development. There, suddenly, there was an utterly lovely drydown of spiced warmth with cocoa powder, cinnamon benzoin, dried roses and a touch of sweet powder, all nestled in a dry-sweet embrace of cocoa-dusted woods. All the edges felt smoothed out, and the result was a delicious, quasi-gourmand that felt beautifully balanced. At times, there was even a subtle patchouli vibe (and you know how I love my patchouli).

Source: the3foragers.blogspot.com

Unfortunately, this stage was very brief on me, and I can only blame my skin. Something happened, and less than 30 minutes later, Cepes and Tuberose turned into the smell of dry dirt on me. Not sweet, loamy, wet soil, but very dry, old dirt, with touches of the other elements that I’ve described above. In its final moments, Cepes and Tuberose was nothing more than a blur of dryness that smelled vaguely like old dirt and potpourri. The whole thing lasted 4.75 hours with two small sprays, and 6.25 hours with a larger quantity. Generally, the sillage was very soft after an initially strong start, but Cepes and Tuberose was quite potent when smelled up close for a number of hours. In both my tests, it became a skin scent after 1.75 and 2.25 hours, depending on the quantity that I applied.

My struggles with Cepes and Tuberose really surprised me. Not only is tuberose my favorite flower in real life, but I love dark, woody, resinous or earthy scents. I certainly have no problems with humus or mushroom notes, as regular readers know from my ravings about Oriza’s Chypre Mousse. I can only chalk things up in this instance to skin chemistry and my personal tastes.

Others, however, have had much better luck with Cepes and Tuberose. Now Smell This has the perfume on its list of 100 things that every perfumista must try, calling it “dark, earthy and sexy.” Olfactoria of Olfactoria’s Travels who doesn’t like tuberose scents was actually driven to song, dance, and music, writing that the “deliciously intoxicating fumes” of the perfume brought out a part of her soul.

Meanwhile, Victoria of EauMG thought it was both sultry and akin to a chocolate-dipped pretzel, writing in part:

Cepes and Tuberose opens with sharp rosewood and hay. After this settles, it’s a big floral with blooming tuberose and dewy rose. It’s slightly sweet and lactonic but not too sweet or lactonic. It’s balanced by a savory saltiness. Think of it as the chocolate dipped pretzel of perfumes or even better yet, a peanut butter cup – a perfect balance of sweet and salty. The dry-down is an earthy yet sweet vanilla-benzoin. On my skin, the mushroom is rather faint. In fact, it is more like the animalic richness that is naturally present in “overripe” white florals. And because of this, Cepes and Tuberose is a rather sultry fragrance.

Perfume-Smellin’ Things found Cepes and Tuberose to be unique, and more akin to umami than to a tuberose scent. I think her umami comparison is extremely clever and astute:

Smelled on its own, tuberose absolute is as I know it, buttery, slightly mentholated and slightly rubbery. Smelled on its own, cepes absolute smells of soy sauce and red wine, a mouthwatering, “tongue-coating”, savory aroma. Smelled right after cepes, tuberose suddenly turns to me with a facet it hasn’t shown before … there is something in fact meaty there … meaty and dry and coated in earth…a certain piquant pungency that it took a mushroom to bring to light…or darkness, as it were.

The composition of Cepes & Tuberose is uncluttered. The two main ingredients are so rich, complex and charismatic, that any other notes have to be “quite simple. The cepes and the tuberose intertwined was all the star material that the perfume could aesthetically accommodate.” (M.Aftel) A little bit of citrus in the top notes brightens the fleshy dark brown of the blend; woods seem to both enhance the creaminess of tuberose and to add to the dry spiciness of porcini. This is undoubtedly one of the most unique tuberose perfumes – and much more than a tuberose perfume. It seems wrong to categorize it as a floral. But neither is it anything else really. It requires a new olfactory category of its own … Umami.

I think the review with which I agree the most is that of my friend, The Perfume Dandy, who accurately notes Ms. Aftel’s achievements in the vanguard of experimental, truly original, almost “avant garde” works in the olfactory plane. In terms of his actual experience with Cepes and Tuberose, he writes:

Cepes and Tuberose stands out for The Dandy as an idiosyncratic masterwork.

Meaty sweet mushrooms meet fleshy over ripe flowers in a carnal embrace that is splendidly earthy at the opening and morphs into an extraordinary splicing of library, forest and eccentric boudoir.

Truly original and quite remarkable.

This may not be a scent for everyone, but in a world of apparently endless choice (are there now more Angels in heaven or on the shelves of Thierry Mugler?) I, for one, am so glad that there are such creative options available.

I very much agree. Cepes and Tuberose isn’t the easiest of scents, and it isn’t for everyone. However, one must applaud Ms. Aftel for pushing the boundaries with something very unique. I have enormous respect for Ms. Aftel in general, but Cepes and Tuberose merely increases it, even if the scent did not work for me personally. To combine tuberose with fougère elements and to create an earthy tuberose with mushrooms… it is brilliantly original.

DETAILS:

Cost & Availability: Cepes and Tuberose is exclusive to the Aftelier website, and comes in different formulations and sizes. Cepes and Tuberose is offered as: 2 ml mini of Pure Parfum for $50; 0.25 oz of Pure Parfum for $170; and 30 ml Eau de Parfum for $170. Samples are available for $6 for a 1/4 ml vial of both the EDP and the pure parfum. Samples: The Eau de Parfum version of Cepes and Tuberose is available from Surrender to Chance where prices have been discounted down to $3.99 from $9.99 for a 1/4 ml vial.

Hiram Green Perfumes Moon Bloom: Ophelia’s Tuberose

Posted on January 22, 2014 by Kafkaesque

“Monna Vanna” by Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

One of my favorite periods in art is the Pre-Raphaelite movement led by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. His exquisite beauties with almost translucent ivory skin and their manes of Titian-red flames stare at you with large, haunted eyes and seemingly quivering lips. Their graceful bodies are either garbed in ornate furs or velvets, or are the embodiment of simplicity against the lushness of nature. In all case, though, they always straddle the line between prim daintiness and richness, delicacy and sensuality, darkness and light.

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood repeatedly came to mind when I wore Moon Bloom, a fragrance centered around the richness of white flowers, particularly tuberose. Yet, it wasn’t my favorite, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, with his ornate beauties who the perfume conjured up.

“Ophelia” by Arthur Hughes. Source: preraphaelitesisterhood.com

Instead, it was the various portrayals of Ophelia by other members of the brotherhood, from John William Waterhouse to Arthur Hughes. The key is the radiance of an Ophelia who glows white, embodying delicacy, gracefulness, warmth and femininity in the midst of very measured, very calibrated, careful lushness. For me, that is the essence of Moon Bloom.

Moon Bloom is an all-natural, handcrafted eau de parfum that released in 2013, the debut creation of Hiram Green Perfumes. The perfume house is based in the Netherlands, but was founded by a British gentleman, Hiram Green, who has quite a background with perfumery in general. His website explains further:

After founding Scent Systems, a perfumery located in central London, Hiram learnt that most perfumes, even the ‘best quality’ ones, are manufactured using synthetic materials. Wanting to offer a natural alternative to his customers, he was hard-pressed to find anything suitable.

After relocating to the Netherlands, Hiram spent several years researching and experimenting with natural fragrant materials. In his studio in Gouda he develops and produces his natural fragrances in small batches.

Moon Bloom via the Hiram Green website.

I love the look of Moon Bloom which comes is a glass bottle with an old-fashioned black atomizer “poofer” (as I call it) pump, dark ambered liquid, and a turquoise wax seal. The description for the fragrance may be even prettier, as it uses a phrase I’d never previously heard in connection with my favorite flower. “The mistress of the night.” I shan’t forget it. Even though I see tuberose as the exquisite embodiment of whiteness, enough people find its narcotic qualities to be overwhelming and utterly evil, thereby making “mistress of the night” quite an apt, very amusing moniker of darkness.

Source: Fragrantica

The perfume’s full description reads:

Moon Bloom is a lush and elegant tuberose themed eau de parfum. Tuberose is a tropical night blooming flower. Often referred to as ‘the mistress of the night’, tuberose is an admired theme in perfumery because of its soft and creamy but also powerful and narcotic aroma.

Moon Bloom includes generous amounts of tuberose absolute, jasmine absolute and ylang ylang. There are also notes of coconut, leafy greens and hints of tropical spices and resins.

Moon Bloom opens on my skin with green, fresh tuberose that has a very mentholated, chilly, rubbery note. I have to admit, I muttered to myself, “here we go again.” It’s undoubtedly unfair to have a bias against the eucalyptus-like, chilled metal opening of many modern tuberose scents. After all, the deconstructed essence of the flower and their indoles often has that precise profile. Still, I’m not a particular fan of it, especially when it takes on the merest whisper of mothballs, the tell-tale sign of truly concentrated or undiluted indoles. Thankfully for me, both the mothballs and the hardcore, rubbery, mentholated intensity fade away within mere minutes. Less than 4 actually, so it truly doesn’t last long on my skin, though a certain chilly coolness does linger for another hour.

The opening moments are a contrast of light and dark. The tuberose is followed almost immediately by a touch of sweet jasmine and by milkiness. Though the dark, rubbery mentholated camphor fades quickly, there remains a light greenness that lurks around the edges. At the same time, the tuberose feels lush, opulent and heady, with indoles that almost border on the dirty. The sweetness of the jasmine grows in strength, flitting all around the top notes, intertwined inextricably with the potent tuberose. The whole thing is warm and rich from the start, with a spicy quality that hints at the base elements.

While Moon Bloom’s opening minutes definitely shares the deconstructed tuberose element of Serge Lutens‘ Tubéreuse Criminelle, I find definite differences between the two. It’s not merely the length of time that each note lasts. It’s also that the note never smells like diesel or gasoline. After the opening salvo, it feels more like a touch of smoky darkness that is replaced by icy menthol. At times, the latter almost feels fizzy, like the aerated champagne bubbles in YSL‘s vintage Champagne or Yvresse. The flood of sweet jasmine also ensures that the indoles don’t stay rubbery or too medicinal for long.

Source: crazy-frankenstein.com

There is another great white flower that I smell, crazy as it sounds. On every occasion when I’ve worn Moon Bloom, there is a core note of what I would swear is gardenia. I thought I was completely mad, as there is no gardenia whatsoever in Moon Bloom. So I wrote to Mr. Green about it, and he replied: “I think of gardenia absolute as smelling between Jasmine and Tuberose. It would not surprise me then if you smelt gardenia in Moon Bloom.” Mr. Green is a very courteous gentleman, so he may have been trying to make me feel better, but I’m going with his explanation. From this point on, I’ll just write “gardenia” in quotes so that you know I’m referring to the oddity of my own nose.

As a whole, Moon Bloom quickly turns into a rich tuberose and jasmine duet with the lightest touch of both greenness and darkness. My favorite part may be the coconut. It’s actually more like vaguely coconut-y, floral milk, than actual heavy, gooey, Hawaiian Tropics butteriness. It’s a delicate, initially watery, soft note that is never cloying or unctuous, though it is quite muted and muffled. For most of Moon Bloom’s lifespan on my skin, the coconut works in the shadows, adding an indirect effect to the base notes and providing a textural quality more than an actual smell of milkiness.

White opal via swissgemshop.ch

“Radiant” may be the best description for Moon Bloom, despite its initial potency and indolic quality. Contrary as it may sound, the perfume feels more radiant and delicate than carnal, fleshy, and over-ripe. It’s a dainty take on a floral powerhouse, and the soft, airy quality that takes over after 20 minutes underscores that impression. Instead of evoking pillowy, fleshy bosoms on languid courtesans, instead of the hot, almost opaque excesses of Fracas (which I love for precisely that reason), Moon Bloom makes me think of an opal stone with its touch of iridescence amidst a milky smoothness. Perhaps its the name of the fragrance with its imagery of flowers blooming in the silvery light of the moon, but I think it’s Moon Bloom’s radiant quality that feels like a perfectly calibrated mix of lushness and bright freshness.

Photo: onewomanshands.blogspot.com

20 minutes in, Moon Bloom starts to shift. The “gardenia” note grows stronger. Here, it is simultaneously a very dewy, green “gardenia” like the version in Ineke‘s Hothouse Flower, and also a lusher, richer interpretation of it. I realise that it is probably the jasmine, but regardless of the actual source, I love the creaminess with its contradictory freshness. The tuberose-jasmine duo still dominate, but the “gardenia” definitely trails in third place. The flowers feel almost weightless, a little too much so for my personal tastes. On my skin, the jasmine is far meatier and richer than the tuberose which feels utterly translucent at this stage. Around the same time, Moon Bloom’s projection drops. It was initially extremely strong, but is now an airy cloud that hovers 2 inches above the skin with 3 spritzes from a little atomizer.

The prominence and role of the individual flowers in Moon Bloom are really interesting. After wearing the fragrance a number of times in the last month, I’ve noticed what seems to be a trend in the perfume’s overall development. Moon Bloom always begins with tuberose, but it then goes through stages where other flowers seem to take over. It feels like a horse-race where the tuberose bursts out of the gate, but becomes neck-and-neck with the other flowers after thirty minutes. First, it is jasmine which surges ahead by a nose, and stays there for the first few hours. Then, its place is taken by the “gardenia” which is heavily intertwined with the tuberose for the next stage. In the end, though, the tuberose returns to overtake them both on the home stretch, and races past the finish line. For me, that’s unusual as most tuberose-centered fragrances that I’ve tried inevitably end up finishing as jasmine or something else. Not Moon Bloom, though the tuberose is definitely in second place for long stretches of time.

Ylang-Ylang. Source: Soapgoods.com

You may have noticed that I haven’t mentioned ylang-ylang in all this. Well, for the first thirty minutes, I can’t detect it at all. Then, almost on the dot, it appears, albeit in extremely muted form. It adds a velvety smooth texture, and, for a second, just the tiniest hint of something banana-like. At the same time, however, it is infused with an almost moss-like greenness at its edges that smells both leafy, and a wee bit reminiscent of Givenchy‘s vintage Ysatis, a ylang-ylang chypre. The greenness is quite separate from the lingering traces of menthol that remains at the edges, but the whole thing is extremely subtle, a bare flicker that only occasionally pops up.

45 minutes in, Moon Bloom is a seamless blend of jasmine, gardenia, tuberose, and ylang-ylang, in that order, with varying, subtle undertones of greenness that range from the leafy to the fizzy to the faintly mentholated. There is a quiet, muted spiciness that stirs in the base, tossing up a touch of gold to the very white, cream, and green coloured palette. The coconut milk has disappeared as an individual note, but it has a profound effect on the base when combined with the ylang-ylang. Thanks to the two elements, the plush, heady white flowers are nestled in a suede-like richness and warmth. I was going to say “custardy,” but that is not really accurate. Nothing about Moon Bloom feels heavy or thick. It’s too delicate to be like velvet, but too creamy to be an airy mousse.

Source: Fragrantica

Perhaps the best way to describe Moon Bloom’s perfectly calibrated, tight-rope act would be to describe the fragrance as “petal-soft.” It mimics the velvety softness that you feel when you stroke a gardenia’s petals and breath in its heady richness, but there is also the airy, fresh radiance of flowers that have not reached their peak or turned blowsy.

Photo: mypham.us

Moon Bloom turns more beautiful with time. Around the 2.5 hour mark, it’s a gorgeous “gardenia” and jasmine scent, infused with tuberose, upon the creamiest, velvety softness. It feels lush, but dainty, and I prefer all of it to Carnal Flower. Best of all, Moon Bloom lacks the Malle perfume’s synthetic base with that terrible, cheap white musk that always gives me a headache if I sniff Carnal Flower up close for too long. Instead, Moon Bloom’s base has an abstract (though muffled) spiciness to it which grows stronger, shedding a golden haze over the soft white flowers.

I find the balancing act that Mr. Green has achieved to be masterful, utterly masterful. He’s managed a refined, modern take on white flowers that never emasculates them or robs them of their true identity. He doesn’t reject their inherent lushness in favour of some ostensible, overbearing “freshness” done purely for the sake of appealing to current market trends. Moon Bloom has that modern vitality and lightness, for this is no Fracas or 1980s powerhouse after all. Yet, instead of aping Carnal Flower, he eschews pure greenness in favour of creaminess and yellowed warmth. (For me, visually, jasmine often skews a buttercup yellow on the colour spectrum, illogical as that may be.)

John Collier, “Queen Guinevere’s Maying” (1900). Source: Wikipedia.

Mr. Green has taken the best of both worlds — the old of Fracas and the new of Carnal Flower — and mixed them into a perfume that gleams like an opal. It has the subtle sensuality of Rossetti’s women, but at a sotto voce level, and countered by the delicate beauty of the Ophelia of his Pre-Raphaelite brethren. There is the luxurious feel of old-style, full-bodied, classique perfumes, but, also, the lightness, airiness, restrained discreetness and brightness of the modern style. Finally, Moon Bloom balances the cool aspects of a green freshness with the warmth of that creamy base, a base whose golden sunniness evokes the Queen of the May far more than “the mistress of the night.” Have I mentioned the word “masterful” yet?

At the end of the 4th hour, Moon Bloom hovers right above the skin, but the scent is so deep or rich that I’m amazed it’s all-natural. The perfume is a velvety-soft blur of white flowers led by the tuberose-gardenia-jasmine trio. The tuberose has finally overtaken its white cousins, as if the jasmine decided to give up the race. The “gardenia” impression continues, while the ylang-ylang is as muted as ever on my skin. The best part of the scent, apart from the return of the tuberose, is that surprisingly creamy base. After 5.25 hours, it feels smoother than ever with a plushness that is texturally very natural and more petal-like than ever. Carnal Flower, at a comparable point in its development, had nothing like it, and was merely a blur of musky jasmine. Moon Bloom has actual depth and body, yet its richness never feels overwhelming.

“Ophelia” by John William Waterhouse, 1910. Source: preraphaelitesisterhood.com

To the contrary, Moon Bloom’s drydown has a softness that borders on the soothing. It’s hard to explain, but there is something about that velvety, petal-like quality and Mr. Green’s perfect balancing act which creates an easiness about the scent. Moon Bloom is so much more comfortable than my beloved Fracas which is all about dressing up to the nines or to seduce. Moon Bloom has an accessible gentleness, but it’s an easiness that never once surrenders its creamy white soul or loses sight of what white flowers are really like. Nothing about the scent feels like a generic, banal, white flower cocktail that you could find at Sephora, but it’s also not a diva act. All of which bring us back to Ophelia. If Fracas is the iconic Maria Callas in diamonds and furs, then Moon Bloom is a Pre-Raphaelite Ophelia. Graceful femininity with seamless smoothness and an absence of rough edges (or synthetics) done in a way that makes the white flowers radiant and soft, but never showy or bold.

In its final hours, Moon Bloom is a velvety tuberose with occasional flashes of “gardenia.” It coats the skin like a whisper, but there is a richness to the tuberose if you put your nose right on your skin. I’m amazed at Moon Bloom’s longevity on my wonky skin. Three good squirts from the little atomizer, or the equivalent of 2 small sprays from a regular bottle, gave me 11.5 hours in duration. One big atomizer squirt gave me about 9 hours, though the sillage dropped much more rapidly and Moon Bloom became a skin scent after 2.5 hours. On Fragrantica, the few votes for longevity are evenly split between “long lasting,” “moderate,” and “weak,” while the sillage numbers are primarily for “moderate,” followed by 1 vote for “heavy.” I really think that the quantity you apply will impact both issues, as well as, obviously, your skin chemistry.

As you can tell, I loved Moon Bloom. It’s a lovely scent that falls midway on the spectrum between Carnal Flower‘s fresh greenness and subdued restraint, and the more indolic variations on tuberose. It’s a far, far cry from Fracas (or even the indolic jasmine powerhouse of La Via del Profumo’s Tawaf), but it’s also removed from Carnal Flower. It feels like a perfectly calibrated mix of both, with strong touches of its own character.

That said, I’m someone whose tastes skew strongly toward super opulent, bold, powerhouses when it comes to my florals, so you need to put my assessment into that definitional context. If you’re someone who finds Carnal Flower to be too intense a white flower explosion, then I do not recommend Moon Bloom. If you can’t stand tuberose or jasmine, then, quite obviously, you should stay far, far away. Moon Bloom is for those who find Carnal Flower to be too anemic or wispy, but who also think Fracas is taking lush richness too far to the other extreme.

My definitional standards and preferences might be firmly placed on the extreme side of the white flower scale, but I’m far from being alone in finding Moon Bloom to be lovely. The perfume has won over many bloggers, with a number of them placing it on their Best of 2013 list. Take, for example, the witty, lovely Victoria of EauMG who writes, in part:

Moon Bloom is a minty, green tuberose with a creamy banana ylang-ylang. It’s huge and luscious and dare I say glamorous! Indoles fall out of jasmine’s cleavage when she bends forward. Her glistening skin is subtly moisturized with coconut oil and this adds a warmth to the white florals. The florals become more “peachy” and lose some of their crisp greenness. Moon Bloom’s dry-down is acrid incense with “green” coconut.

Moon Bloom is glamorous and flawlessly put together. I realize that my description or even the note list may scare away some people that have white floral “issues”; however, please don’t let it. Moon Bloom is big but subtle. It’s one of the few tuberose perfumes that allows you to be the diva and doesn’t try to steal your spotlight. I really think this one will win over those timid of tuberose. And it will be loved by those that adore white florals. I can’t stop sniffing it when I wear it. It’s gorgeous and it makes me feel gorgeous. […]

Moon Bloom has average projection and longevity. In my opinion, it wears for much longer than other all-natural compositions. I get 6-8 hours. It does become more subtle after 2-3 hours but that’s fine with me. […]

Victoria’s Final EauPINION – Gorgeous, glamorous tuberose soliflore. I think Mr. Green just helped a lot of perfumistas find “their” tuberose. This is the easiest to wear straightforward tuberose soliflore that I’ve ever encountered.

Victoria loved it so much that she put it on her Best of 2013 list, but she’s not alone in appreciating Moon Bloom. The Perfume Shrine put the fragrance in a tie with Aftelier’s Cuir Gardenia for their Best Natural of 2013. And Olfactoria’s Travels thinks it’s great as well.

Olfactoria writes that she has a very cautious relationship with tuberose, though she no longer has outright hatred for the note. In Moon Bloom, she found the flower to be “perfectly balanced,” soft and with “no hint here of the hysterical, diva-esque antics” that many tuberose fragrances display. On her skin, the florals eventually “recede a bit and a base emerges that is warm, a tiny bit spicy (think carnation/clove) and cosy in an unsweet, ambery (vanilla/labdanum) way.” As a whole, Moon Bloom evoked a woman whom she found to be

extremely sympathetic. I feel myself drawn to her and her charmingly enticing ways. She is intelligent, calm, she knows who she is. She is beautiful and desirable, but she doesn’t use that as a weapon, it is merely a fact of her life, equal among many. She loves to smile and there is an air of mystery around her, but this doesn’t make her appear aloof or remote, but draws you in closer, wanting to find out more.

What stands out most about this woman though, is her smile: warm, loving, caring and infinitely sweet, it is hard to remain untouched when you find yourself in the radiant presence of that smile.

Warmth is a far cry for what one adoring blogger perceived in Moon Bloom. My favorite review of the fragrance comes from The Silver Fox, a blogger who admittedly loves white floral bombs, but who has tried enough of them to know that Moon Bloom is special. He begins his review with fantastic elucidation of why it can be so cool for men to wear fleshy white flowers:

For me, a man wearing white florals is the subversive writhing of indolic strangeness, the blush of purity degraded, underpinned by the all too sexual skin washes of tuberose, lilies, ylang, gardenia and orange blossom. It is the fleshy conflict between light and dark, beauty and decay, sex and chastity that fascinates me.

In many ways these are overtly female blooms, but I adore transgression as many of you know. Boys smell so decadent in florals, so Tennessee Williams, muscular, tense and ambiguous, afraid of inner desires yet reaching out to embrace them. […][¶]

Hiram Green’s luscious, alabaster Moon Bloom is probably one of the best tuberose soliflores I have tried in many years. This shocked me for several reasons. One, I thought I had probably tried as many permutations and plays on the blooms as were strictly speaking possible and two, Hiram’s delicious scent is made exclusively from natural ingredients, a notification that does not generally make my Foxy heart sing.

Moon Bloom is creamy, glittering perfection. The name is so alluring and romantic, exactly right for this narcotic formulation of floral wonder. It is a strangely intense perfume, inhaling it transports me to frozen streets pierced by milky shafts of moonlight in a silent city. Snow falls, marble glistens, time slows. My skin is waxen, radiating the ivory effulgence of tuberose and jasmine absolutes. A lick of distant tropics from an ice-cold coconut note, green and glacial at the same time.

I highly recommend reading the entirety of his long but absolutely stellar, beautifully evocative review. There, he talks about why Mr. Green’s technical balancing act with the essential absolutes is so masterful, as well as offering further details of how the tuberose appears, the “pearlescent” jasmine, and the key impact of the coconut milk in his version of Moon Bloom. For him, the latter reminded him “of the wonderful oozing ripe fig effect used in the Extrème version of Premier Figuier by L’Artisan Parfumer.” He ends his fantastic analysis with these powerful images:

Moon Bloom is made for night skin, waxen and white-lit under bleak staring moons. A fragrance for skins in troubled love, in pain, lost perhaps. There is alchemy at work here and it smells like snow falling in the hush of night.

"Moon in the billowing mists" by Norroen-Stjarna on Deviantart.com

“Moon in the billowing mists” by Norroen-Stjarna. http://www.deviantart.com/art/Moon-in-the-billowing-mists-306095826

The Silver Fox seems to have experienced a lot more of the freezing, “iced metal” aspects of the menthol that either I or the other bloggers did, but it’s all a matter of skin chemistry. For me, Moon Bloom is not about “billowing snow,” and my skin did not bring out “a dazzling blindness to the carnal theme of Hiram’s whiteness, the kiss of frozen lips in a city paralysed by ice and the swirling rogue of winter flurries.” (What a spectacular piece of writing!) In fact, the concept of carnality never once crossed my mind with Moon Bloom, which just goes to show you how much one’s yardstick matters in assessing indolic florals. In fact, I’m starting to wonder just how much my childhood imprinting with Fracas and my subsequent love for Amouage-like Middle Eastern opulence has impacted my definitions, because I thought Tawaf was the embodiment of carnal voluptuousness, while Moon Bloom seems so lady-like and approachable.

To be clear, The Silver Fox does largely agree with that as well, writing extensively about how the tuberose is never lascivious or extreme. As he so amusingly puts it, the tuberose of Moon Bloom never screeches like a “drunken karaoke singer belting out gay anthems” who has to be tackled by his mates to shut up. For him, the tuberose is thankfully “far removed from this pitiful spectacle. It is strong-willed, full of drama, but intelligent and deeply charismatic, filling the room with brilliant, searching light.”

As you can see, the word “intelligent” keeps coming up in connection with Moon Bloom, along with “calm,” “approachable,” or “radiant” in descriptions that emphasize how the tuberose is not divaesque. And it’s true. This version is not the Ride of the Valkyries, and it’s not just my wonky, skewed perception. I love Fracas, but she’s not always the easiest thing to wear on a daily basis. Moon Bloom is.

Moon Bloom bottle and decant, via Hiram Green.

Moon Bloom is available in two different sizes. There is an affordable 5 ml decant sold for roughly $27 (or €25 with the VAT), while the full bottle costs about $150 with a more affordable refill option being introduced later this year. The original bottle is gorgeous, though, with the perfect blend of classicism and clean-cut modernism.

All in all, if you’re a white flower lover, I strongly recommend that you try Moon Bloom. For those with a much more tenuous relationship to the florals, I think you have to like both the initial mentholated aspect and a touch of indoles to enjoy the scent. On the other hand, Olfactoria who is iffy on tuberose really liked Moon Bloom, so perhaps you will too. As a whole, I think Moon Bloom skews more feminine than unisex, but in all cases, its relatively moderate longevity and soft sillage make it suitable for the office.

I have to end this long review with a simple word about Hiram Green: talented. Enormously talented. His debut effort is an utterly masterful display of technical brilliance. Bravo.

Disclosure: My sample was courtesy of Hiram Green. That did not impact this review. I do not do paid reviews, my views are my own, and my first obligation is honesty to my readers.

DETAILS:

Cost & Availability: Moon Bloom is an eau de parfum that comes in a 50 ml bottle that costs €111.57 for non-European customers and €135 for European ones who have to pay VAT. It is available the Hiram Green website, which also sells a 5 ml decant for €20.66 without VAT, and €25 with the tax included. Later this year, a cheaper refill option should be available. I believe the current bottle and decant are also refillable at the current time. Whichever bottle you choose to get, the website will automatically subtract or add the VAT based on your delivery address. ships its scents world-wide. In the U.S.: There are no US retailers at this time. You have to order from Hiram Green, or from one of the European vendors which carries the line. [UPDATE 7/9/14: Moon Bloom has now come to the U.S. and is exclusive to Indigo Perfumery which sells the full bottle for $165, with the 5 ml travel spray for $40, and a sample for $4.] Outside the U.S.: Moon Bloom is available at 7 European retailers. One is First in Fragrance which ships world-wide and which sells Moon Bloom at retail for €135, with a sample for €8. In the Netherlands, Amsterdam’s Annindriya Perfume Lounge sells both the 50 ml bottle and the 5 ml decant size. Other vendors are in Austria, Germany, and Sweden. They are listed on Hiram Green’s Stockist Page. Samples: I could not find Moon Bloom at this time on either Surrender to Chance or The Perfumed Court. I will try to update this section if the fragrance becomes available at either one.

Frederic Malle Carnal Flower

Posted on January 20, 2014 by Kafkaesque

The benchmark for all tuberose scents was set by the legendary Fracas, but the modern contender and favorite for the throne may be a creation by Frederic Malle: Carnal Flower. It is an accessible, easy, very fresh and, therefore, very modern take on white floral powerhouses. I’m generally not one for floral scents, but I make a particular exception for the fleshiest of white, narcotic, indolic flowers. I’m an absolute sucker for a white powerhouses, and tuberose is my favorite flower in the world. So, I should positively adore Carnal Flower, right? Hm.

Frederic Malle. Source: Paris.com

The luxury fragrance house Editions de Parfums Frederic Malle is one of the most respected niche perfume lines in the world. It was founded in 2000 by Frederic Malle, a man who has expensive perfume in his blood. His grandfather started Christian Dior Perfumes, and his mother later worked as an Art Director for the same perfume house. In 2005, Malle teamed up with legendary perfumer, Dominique Ropion, to create Carnal Flower. It is an eau de parfum inspired by Malle’s aunt, the actress Candice Bergen, and her role in the 1971 film, Carnal Knowledge.

Source: Forty Five Ten.

Malle’s website describes Carnal Flower as follows:

If nature offers olfactive clashes, tuberose is probably the best example of it. These pretty flowers exude an almost carnal smell, superimposing in a quasi-miraculous way flower shop freshness, camphorous violence – spicy and animalic – and milky sweetness. This mysterious equilibrium has always fascinated perfumers. 18 months were necessary for Dominique Ropion to forward a modern version of that theme, an “olfactive Everest” that only the most talented perfumers were capable of reaching.

Fragrantica lists its notes as follows:

The top notes contain: bergamot, melon and eucalyptus. The middle notes include: ylang-ylang, jasmine, tuberose, Salicylates (natural, toxic product of herbal origin, a sort of a herbal feromone which is used by plants as a warning). The base encompasses: tuberose absolute, orange blossom absolute, coconut and musk.

Source: tarrantcounty.com

Carnal Flower opens on my skin with a tinge of bergamot and green honeydew melon, then a loud bang of tuberose and eucalyptus. The fleshy, white flower is rendered icy with the mentholated notes, but there is also a definite milky quality to the scent. It stems from the tiniest flicker of the coconut in the base. The nicest part of Carnal Flower is the cool, green vibe. From the start, almost to the finish, there is a watery quality to the scent, not just from the dewy melon, but from a sense of the tuberose stem having been cut and dripping out its green liquid into the vase water that surrounds it.

Eucalyptus leaves.

The eucalyptus adds a chilly camphorated note that cuts like a knife through the flower’s usual sweetness. In other tuberose scents, that sweetness that can sometimes verge on either bubble gum or Welch’s grape jelly, due to the salicylates. Not here. At the same time, the eucalyptus ensures a freshness that pre-empts any indolic fleshiness, over-ripe voluptuousness, and heaviness. Indoles can create an over-blown ripeness in a floral scent which, on some skin, can end up turning fecal, urinous, plastic-y or reminiscent of a cat’s litter box. That is never the case here, for Carnal Flower’s indolic richness is kept firmly in check by the freshness of the icy eucalyptus and that subtle touch of green melon.

Carnal Flower’s initial blast of eucalyptus softens in less than five minutes. The briefly camphorated undertone turns into a simple greenness that is cool and crisp. The touch of citric freshness vanishes, and its place is taken by the first stirrings of the other white flowers. The orange blossom and jasmine lurk in the base for the most part, along with the coconut, but they start to throw up a translucent white arm to wave hello once in a while before sinking back to the depths like a shy mermaid. For now, Carnal Flower is all about the tuberose, singing a solo on center stage with the eucalyptus standing a few feet behind.

Tuberose. Source: Fragrantica.de

The greenness in Carnal Flower is quite multi-faceted. Besides the chilliness imparted by the eucalyptus, there is an aroma that feels as though the tuberose’s green leaves, stem, and unripe buds have been crushed into a slightly bitter oil. Later, the note takes on the distinct aroma of vase water that has been left untouched for a few days. There is a murkiness to the leafy, green note, though it never really rises to the level of fetid. Still, every time I’ve worn Carnal Flower, there is always a subtle flicker of dark, watery greenness that calls to mind stale, stagnant vase water.

Jasmine via Wikicommons

It takes 20 minutes for the jasmine to arrive, fusing with the tuberose to become the focal point of the scent. The eucalyptus’ icy chilliness slowly begins to fade away, though the green freshness remains as a strong constant throughout the life of Carnal Flower. As the mentholated undertone becomes a mere flicker, Carnal Flower turns warmer, sweeter, and deeper, less fresh and cool. Ten minutes later, the orange blossom joins the parade of white flowers, creating quite a layered lushness.

The sillage, however, is moderate on my skin. Three small sprays from my small decant gives me a soft, airy cloud that wafts a maximum of 3 inches, at most. The thin, airy weight and restrained projection are a surprise for a scent that is so strong when smelled up close for the first two hours. Interpretations of airiness and sillage will obviously depend on one’s personal yardstick, but for me, none of Malle’s fragrances have much heft. He seems to ascribe to the modern French definition of “strong,” which seems to be significantly different than that of some American and Middle Eastern fragrance houses. Or perhaps it’s just me, for I’m continually unimpressed by what Malle considers to be intense or rich, let alone “Oriental.”

I think it’s only fair to explain that feeling, as it bears a lot on this review and my response to Carnal Flower. When I visited one of Malle’s Paris boutiques, I went through the range of Malle fragrances which were laid out in what seemed to be a progression of strength and richness from left to right. At the far end of the scale was Musc Ravageur whose placement seemed to be presented as the most opulently oriental, extreme, heavy or rich scent that they had. It bore home to me that my definition of things varies enormously from that of Monsieur Malle. I kept asking the rather constipated, prune-mouthed sales assistant for something “stronger, heavier, richer,” because half the scents seemed to be watery, thin, translucent, or restrained to the point of aloofness.

Fracas Eau de Parfum.

The point of all this is that I am obviously not Malle’s target customer. Not in a million years. And I think that is especially true when it comes to his florals. If I’m going to wear tuberose, I want a sonic boom like the Fracas that I grew up with, or like an Amouage scent. I want concentrated heft, richness, and body. For me, personally, I don’t see the point otherwise. I’m not wearing an all-natural fragrance with its inherent limitations.

The problem seems to be that my benchmark for white florals was set by Fracas when I was 7 years old. Vintage Fracas is one of two perfumes that forever shaped both me and my perfume tastes. (The other being the benchmark scent for Orientals, vintage Opium.) When you are imprinted with vintage Fracas as your idea of the perfect tuberose, and then you’re faced by a very pretty, albeit watery and green, tuberose that has a fraction of its richness and little of its indolic, narcotic, heady fleshiness, you’re bound to be somewhat underwhelmed.

Source: Colourbox.com

Carnal Flower definitely leaves me at a bit of a loss, especially after the end of the first hour. It becomes this translucent, diaphanous, gauzy blur of whiteness with some greenness and some creaminess. The prominence and power of certain notes vary over the next few hours, but the core essence never changes one iota. The orange blossom fluctuates in strength, but it is always in third place behind the jasmine and tuberose on my skin. In any event, it fades away about 2.75 hours into Carnal Flower’s development. The jasmine often seems to overtake the tuberose on my skin as the main note, but it’s sometimes hard to single out the specific floral components as Carnal Flower becomes an increasingly abstract veil of white flowers with some freshness. The creamy quality never translates as coconut on my skin, and is much more of a textural quality. As a whole, it’s nice, but …. eh.

While the coconut leaves me underwhelmed, I’m wholly unenthused by the white musk that pops up about 4.75 hours in. It’s a synthetic touch that consistently gives me a headache if I sniff Carnal Flower up close for too long. I don’t even see the purpose of it. It doesn’t smell fresh or clean. It’s simply… there. Eventually, Carnal Flower devolves into a vaguely musky jasmine scent with some occasional touches of tuberose and greenness. It remains that way until its end. All in all, Carnal Flower lasted 11.25 hours on me, perhaps thanks to the white musk which my skin clings onto like mad.

It is all very pretty, with enjoyable greenness and a refined handling of the tuberose, but Carnal Flower really fails to do much for me. Every single time I’ve worn Carnal Flower over the last two years, the trajectory of my reaction is always the same:

Opening: “Oh, eucalyptus. Ugh,”

10 minutes later: “Huh, this is so incredibly pretty, why don’t I wear this more often??!”

An hour after that: “Oh. Right. Now I remember why. Hm. Maybe I should put some vintage Fracas over it?”

I’ve spent so much time trying to explain my reaction to Carnal Flower for a few different reasons. First, I’m fully aware that saying Carnal Flower is insufficiently potent, indolic, rich, and full-bodied makes me sound insane to the average perfumista. For almost everyone else, it is the epitome of an indolic, opulent, white floral powerhouse. Well, maybe you had to grow up with Fracas in the 1970s, and have a taste for super-charged, bold, or Middle Eastern perfumery in general. Second, Carnal Flower is one of those legendary scents that most people have already tried and have an opinion on, so there isn’t much point in quoting other reviews. At this point, it’s merely a case of comparing experiences, and providing a context for one’s perspective.

Source: Basenotes.

What may be more useful is to compare Carnal Flower to other tuberose-centered fragrances in this genre. As noted above, Fracas is the reference and gold standard, but it is a very different fragrance as a whole. It’s more fleshly, heavy, opaque, and voluptuous. Alas, the new modern eau de parfum is also syrupy, sweet, and somewhat synthetic in feel. Carnal Flower’s essence is slightly closer to Le Labo‘s 2013 Lys 41 which is a similarly fresh white floral cocktail, but again there are differences. Lys 41 has the dewy, faintly metallic coolness of lily, not the green freshness from eucalyptus. It is also substantially creamier and more vanillic, thanks to the buttery notes provided by the Tahitian gardenia or tiaré. On my skin, Carnal Flower’s coconut was neither particularly noticeable in an individual, distinct way nor tropical in nature, but Un Lys definitely had that undertone.

Source: hdwallpaperspics.com

Serge Lutens‘ Tubereuse Criminelle is much more significant, as Malle and Ropion were clearly influenced by the Lutens version which preceded Carnal Flower by six years. The 1999 Tubereuse Criminelle has a heavily mentholated, rubbery, almost diesel-like and leathered blackness to its opening eucalyptus notes. It is more masculine, bold, intense, and forceful (in both body and projection), before softening and eventually turning into something very golden and warm with vanilla and styrax. It never feels green and fresh, let alone watery, and it is also a much more difficult fragrance than the easier, more accessible Carnal Flower. I suspect that is why Malle’s tuberose scent edges out the Lutens as the favorite modern tuberose.

The Perfume Shrine has a fantastic rundown of Carnal Flower’s place on the tuberose spectrum, beginning with the reference benchmark, Fracas:

The history of tuberose in perfumery passes through that parfum phare as the French say (a “lighthouse perfume”, a landmark more like it): Fracas, conceived by the fauvist Germaine Cellier for Robert Piguet, with its fleshy, lush contradicting qualities edged upon the two extremes: creamy, candy-ish beauty and violent hystrionics leading to decay. Blonde by Versace is its poorer , aspiring -and rather successful- imitator with a flamboyant style that is very Italian, a civet come-hither innuendo and quite pleasant in calculated moderation especially in extrait de parfum. Serge Lutens Tubéreuse Criminelle presents a peculiar problem : one has to wait for the crucial first 15 minutes, when the demonic camphor note subsides, giving reign to the glorious creaminess and silky softness of the flower. Caron’s Tubereuse is very radiant , yet perfume-y although lighter and not suited to today’s sensibilities, I find. Carolina Herrera (the original one by the famous designer) is a bit too operatic, being so much infused with another bombshell : jasmine. Some of the rest (Lauder’s Private Collection Tuberose Gardenia and Do Son by Diptyque) are either more positioned towards gardenia or too light for carnal aspirations. Vamp a NY by Honore des Pres is more candied than that and with a generous helping of pink jasmine, although equally magnificent. Tuberose perfumes are a real continent: there are variations in the verdure to suit everyone. [Emphasis to names and bolding added by me.]

Candace Bergen via Pinterest.

The Perfume Shrine helped me understand why Carnal Flower leaves me giving a Gallic shrug. It’s not “operatic.” I happen to love and own the Carolina Herrera scent that she mentions (I told you I loved tuberose), and its rich tuberose-jasmine duet is like Maria Callas in full aria. Though it’s increasingly hard to find now, it was once the signature fragrance of Angelina Jolie and the actress may be the perfect embodiment of the scent, while Carnal Flower fits the young Candice Bergen much better. She was lovely with fresh, golden, California girl looks, so the comparison is not intended to be an insult at all. It’s merely a difference in style.

Plus, as the Perfume Shrine says so well, Malle was clearly seeking to do something very different: “Carnal Flower was from the beginning a mission into offering something different.” He wanted not only the feel of Southern California, but Candace Bergen’s clean beauty with

a seemingly fresh scent, something that will titillate the nostrils and the mind. The camphor note, reminiscent of eycalyptus leaves, is a necessity: At once freeing the weight of the inherent indolic character of the blossom, which browns as it decays, and imitating the exhalation of tuberose in nature: greenish and somewhat mentholic from afar. Yet the mentholated note does not make a grand appearence in Carnal Flower like it does in Tubéreuse Criminelle: the composition is therefore less striking, arguably less thought-provoking, but more wearable by more people as a result. Not a jarring note in sight; even the fruitier notes, like coconut and melon, are interspersed through sleight of hand to evoke freshness and sensuousness. Like Candice Bergen, it’s beautiful, but then again, not without wits or substance, and although undeniably sensual and sexy, it is high class and a lady, not a slut, at all times.

I agree with her fully, even if I prefer more thought-provoking or operatic scents. Carnal Flower is indeed beautiful, elegant, and refined. It’s also incredibly easy to wear, though I’m probably the lone weirdo who thinks its restraint and simplicity makes it more of a daily scent than a special occasion one. I highly doubt anyone else would think Carnal Flower is the breezy thing to quickly spray on to run errands or to visit the vet. For me, if I were to opt for tuberoses on a date night or evening out, it would always be vintage Fracas or the eponymous Carolina Herrera scent.

In my admitted skewed and distorted opinion, the only thing that would put Carnal Flower into the more “special” category is its very high price. The smallest bottle costs $240 or €160, though there are more affordable travel-sized sprays that are also available. Is it worth it? If you love fresh, green, barely indolic tuberose, then most definitely yes! If you can’t stand big white flowers, or even moderately indolic scents, then obviously you should stay away. Carnal Flower may be greener than most tuberose scents, but it’s not that fresh.

All in all, Carnal Flower is gorgeous by the average person’s (white floral) standards, and a very modern take on the tuberose opulence of old. It has decent sillage and good longevity as well. I think it skews wholly feminine in nature, but I do know men who wear Carnal Flower. In fact, one of my best friends can’t live without his “Carnal Flora” which he confidently wears to the office without a second thought. Other men, however, seem to prefer the bolder, darker Lutens’ fragrance. And I prefer to stick to the even bolder, operatic, old-school versions. In all cases, and regardless of gender, I think it’s going to come down to the sort of white flowers that you like.

DETAILS:

Cost & Availability: You can purchase Carnal Flower in a variety of different forms and sizes. On his website, Malle offers: a small 50 ml/1.7 oz bottle for $240 or €160; or a large 100 ml/3.4 oz bottle for $350 or €235. On the EU website, there is the option of 3 travel-sized sprays in a 10 ml size for €105. In the U.S., there is also a Carnal Flower hair mist which costs $160 for 100 ml. Finally, in EU and U.S. both, there is a 200 ml body butter cream for $215 or €140. In the U.S.: You can find Carnal Flower at Barneys which offers all the different versions of the scent, except for the EU travel spray option. In NYC, Aedes offers Carnal Flower in the 3×10 ml travel sprays for $160, along with the other versions of the scent but not the 50 ml bottle. Elsewhere, you can find it at Forty Five Ten, and there are other U.S. retailers listed on the Malle website at the store link below. Outside of the U.S.: you can find Carnal Flower at Frederic Malle’s International/EU website and in his Paris boutiques. In Canada, Carnal Flower and Malle fragrances are exclusive to Holt Renfrew which only offers the 100 ml bottle of the scent for CAD$385. In the UK, it is sold at London’s Liberty, though it only offers the 100 ml (for £210) or the body butter. However, Les Senteurs has Carnal Flower in the small and travel sizes, and sells samples. Elsewhere, you can find Carnal Flower at Skins in the Netherlands (in all versions from the travel sprays to the 50 ml bottle), Italy’s Alla Violetta, Australia’s Mecca Cosmetica (the online site only offers the 100 ml for AUD$350), Dubai’s Harvey Nichols, Saudi Arabia’s D’NA, Singapore’s Malmaison by the Hour Glass, and many others. For all other countries, you can use the Store Locator to find a location nearest you from Japan to South Africa. Samples: If you want to test Carnal Flower, Surrender to Chance sells it starting at $8.99 for a 1 ml vial.