Ambrette, northern lights and goose
down
Iridescent, crystal-clear
as chilled pear alcohol, yet musky-soft, the hibiscus seed is having a moment,
its facets polished with iris, rose and pear, in with Parfum d’Empire’s soaring
chypre Le Cri de la Lumière and Zadig & Voltaire’s ethereal La
Pureté, by the peerless Michel Almairac, in their new Scent Library collection.
Alternative choices: the more easily-sourced, adamantine Chanel N°18 or the rarer Eau
Aztèque by Olivia Giacobetti for Iunx, the precursor of the ambrette
solinotes in 2003.
Hibernating
in patchouli
Burrowing deep in
humus and earth, rolled up in a ball, waiting for spring… Dear Rose’s Comme
une Fleur by Fabrice Pellegrin improbably combines uncut, hippie
patchouli and orange blossom to evoke the strength of flower pushing through earth
to come to light. Daniela Andrier’s deeply weird Une Amourette for État
Libre d’Orange skews the same accord by boosting the indole and spiking her
funky patchouli with Akigalawood, a sci-fi Givaudan material that mutates
patchouli into a pepper-and-earth note.
The
bitter comfort of dark chocolate
Cocoa absolute is
surprisingly funky, a cruelty-free substitute for animal materials (my cat reacts
to it as she does to castoreum) and an intriguing shift along the olfactory map
that leads to patchouli or vanilla. I’ve been sating my dark chocolate cravings
with my decant of Mathilde Laurent’s VII- L’Heure Défendue in Cartier’s “Les
Heures de Parfum” collection, a liqueur-smooth wedding of the bean and the
beast. By Kilian’s Noir Aphrodisiaque, a Paris exclusive composed by Calice Becker
and genius chocolatier Jacques Génin,
brings a more floral twist to the cocoa-patchouli accord: a sip of jasmine tea
melting a square of cinnamon-laced dark chocolate (it’s getting hot in here).
Part of my all-time winter rotation, Arquiste’s Anima Dulcis melds the Aztec bean with unsweetened vanilla,
chili pepper and a Prunol-ish, chypre vibe that somehow makes it the distant Latino
relative of Serge Lutens’ Arab-by-way-of-Tokyo Féminité du Bois, a major matrix of contemporary perfumery.
Now to post this before
the Seine runneth over and wets my toes…
For more Winter top
10s, please visit Bois de Jasmin, Now Smell This, Perfume Posse and TheNon-Blonde.
Illustration: this steampunk Death Star was my view from the window of my room in the Queen Elizabeth hotel. It's actually the dome of the Montreal Cathedral.
As a bonus, Gene Kelly's exhilarating riffing on Michel Legrand in Jacques Demy's Les Demoiselles de Rochefort.