Penhaligon's Amaranthine: Lost in the Hothouse

The name conjures a princess in a French 17th century fairy-tale: the fair Amaranthine, championed by her knight-servant Penhaligon. But their distant descendent, Amaranthine Penhaligon, could be a plucky spinster hammering away whodunits in a Dorset cottage under a suitably masculine nom de plume…

That’s pretty much where we left off the venerable house of Penhaligon’s: stuck somewhere between Fortnum and Mason’s preserves and Aquascutum macs in the list of royal crest-bearing British institutions.

But since its acquisition by Cradle Holdings, also the owner of L’Artisan Parfumeur, Penhaligon’s has been dusting off its shelves and bottles with the help of – surprise, surprise – L’Artisan’s star signatures Olivia Giacobetti (who composed last year’s Elixir, a tribute to the 1872 Hammam Bouquet) and Bertrand Duchaufour, who revamped four house classics issued in the Anthology collection (Night Scented Stock, Eau de Verveine, Extract of Limes and Gardenia).

Duchaufour’s contribution to the catalogue is the aforementioned Amaranthine, which is just about as far from tweedy and spinsterish as you could imagine – unless this spinster has a deep dark secret in her past.

In fact, Amaranthine conjures an entirely other type of English heroine, say Mrs. Crosbie in Somerset Maugham’s The Letter, as played by Bette Davis in William Wyler’s 1940 adaptation: a beautiful British colonial wife in a Singaporean rubber plantation, accused of murdering her lover…

Amaranthine develops similar layers of crisp propriety concealing scandal and steamy passion. The scent has variously been compared to Jean-Michel Duriez’s Sira des Indes for Jean Patou for its banana/sambac/milk rewriting of the oriental genre, and to Sandrine Videault’s Manoumalia for its tropical lushness on a hint of vegetal decay. But unlike the latter – French perfumery gone native with an anthropology vibe – Amaranthine would never skimp on slipping on a floor-length tea gown for her 5 o’clock Assam.

The fragrance’s closest relative to my mind would probably be Michel Roudnitska’s Amoureuse for Parfums DelRae: in fact, if you liked Amoureuse but found it a little overwhelming, Amaranthine is more than worth a spin.

Bertrand Duchaufour has clearly stretched his usually more austere vocabulary to include sensuous white, green and spicy florals. Amaranthine has the intricate structure of a particularly fussy orchid – the pride of Major Penhaligon’s hothouse – with layers unfurling teasingly over the hours. An almost metallic, cardamom and coriander-spiked green accord swings between banana-vanilla sweetness and a muguet-jasmine-orange blossom soapiness, before warmer, tropical spices take over with clove and ylang-ylang relaying the banana-vanilla accord.

The scent’s development is truly labyrinthine, with every flower in the hothouse engaging in duets, trios and choruses in turn, with wafts from the spice garden and the orchard where exotic fruit are slowly ripening and fermenting…

When Amaranthine finally drowns in a lush, milky sandalwood and musk base, petals strewn all over the plantation, she has shed her last shred of propriety. And she’s ready to take the consequences.

Image: Bette Davis in The Letter, by William Wyler (1940)