I Wore This: Le Labo Laurier 62 Home Fragrance

My feeling is that if it's good enough to spray in the air I breathe, and if I'm going to be smelling it anyway, then it's good enough to wear. There's also that whole body is a temple thing, and a temple is a room, so I go with that.

I was curious about Laurier because it was said to contain eucalyptus, rosemary, laurel, thyme, cumin, clove, amber, patchouli, and sandalwood, among other things. They had me at cumin and clove. I've had good experiences with Le Labo's home sprays: I wear Calone and like it a lot, and the fig and pine are nice. Laurier is a somewhat cacophonous smell, not safe for the office probably, which makes it ideal office wear.

Once I was in Barney's surveying the Diptyque selection. This was back when the line had more than the three or four room sprays they carry now. I'd wanted the John Galliano room spray for some time but I don't really spray rooms, I spray my skin, so I just enjoyed it whenever I saw it in the store. It never occurred to me to wear it, until the sales associate that day told me she sprayed the Dptyque home sprays on her clothes. That shouldn't have probably been a revelation but it was. I left the store with a bottle of the Galliano, and gasped for air all winter as it wafted up from my scarf.

Have you smelled Galliano? It's a big bonfire of a scent, smoked with clove and burning wood. It reminds me of a memory from childhood. We lived in an apartment complex in Houston and one of the units caught on fire. The following day some of us walked past the building surveying the damage. You could see through the walls. Everything inside was charred. I remember seeing a pink stuffed animal which looked like it had been dipped in tar. Fire was something like the ocean to me at that age: too powerful and swift and mercurial in its currents to grasp. The whole area smelled like Galliano, which isn't to say that Galliano reminds me of people who've lost their homes, but it does remind me somehow of this fearful power and the respect it commands. Or something like that.

A friend smelled Laurier on my hand and remarked that it reminded him of burning eraser. Later he said it smelled like the outdoors. It does smell somewhat like you're standing in the woods and someone nearby has sprayed Galliano.

Amber Alert: Ambre Dore by Maitre Parfumeur et Gantier

A few years ago, when I discovered that Bonwit Teller carried the Maitre Parfumeur et Gantier line, I bought a few of my favorites over the phone. At that point, it was hard to find some of the older MPG fragrances - like Eau des Iles, Parfum D'Habit, Camelia Chinois, and Ambre Precieux. Even the stores that did carry the line didn't seem to include such rarities in their inventory, and one day, talking to the sales associate, I discovered there was one so rare I'd never even heard of it. Soir d'Orient had been reviewed three times on Makeupalley.com and averaged a rating of four and a half. It was described at the time (pre oud craze) as a leather amber with smoked vanillic facets. And Bonwit Teller hadn't carried any in quite some time.

Fast forward to 2012, when MPG announced the release of a new fragrance called Ambre Dore. More than a few comments online remarked at the similarity of notes between Dore and D'Orient. Were they the same fragrance? The notes I could find for Soir d'Orient included amber, oud, and leather. The notes for Dore: essence of oud, ambergris, saffron, styrax resin, coriander, myrrh, and vetiver. Fragrantica eventually cleared the air with its listing for Dore. According to them, it was in fact a reissue of that 2006 rarity formerly known as Soir D'Orient. The craze for oud made this once special issue fragrance, exclusive to the Eastern market, now marketable to the rest of us.

My hopes were pretty high for Dore, as Soir D'Orient, its former incarnation, represented that now practically extinct thing in perfumery - something I wanted but couldn't get my hands on. And while almost no fragrance I can think of could possibly fulfill such built up expectations, Dore makes an admirable go of it.

The few reviews I've read commend Ambre Dore for its robust, animalic opening. If you consider oud animalic, they might be right. For me, it's a smooth, ambery melange which smells a little like leather but more like what we've all now pretty much agreed is "oud". Whether this is "oud essence", as MPG says, or good old fashioned cypriol I can't tell you, but it's pretty fantastic either way. I don't know what I would have made of this opening four or five years ago, before oud became so ubiquitous in niche perfumery that it might as well be fig or iris. I might have regarded Soir d'Orient as "slightly medicinal", which is how we were all describing oud back when it made its first, feeble bid for our attention. I wouldn't have helped support its journey West, I suspect.

By the time I finally caved and bought a bottle of Ambre Dore, I'd been searching for the near perfect amber for several months. Ambre Dore comes nearer to that near than anything else I've gotten my hands on. After its wonderfully rich opening, it settles down into a slight variation on the wonderful Ambre Precieux, with touches of resins and vanilla, a fairly old fashioned take on the classic amber fragrance, which is the kind of thing I like. Ambre Russe has this quality, to some degree, though it perks things up with apple. Lutens' Ambre Sultan, despite all the herbs, is pretty old fashioned. Still, Sultan is too much of a skin scent for me; Russe is wonderful in almost every way, and I can't tell you in just which way it isn't quite as wonderful as I'd like it to be. I like some amount of oomph in an amber, and some of my favorites, much as I love them, get a little too powdery a little too quickly. When they don't get powdery, they start to smell less like amber. Even once it mellows considerably, an hour or so in, Ambre Dore has that kind of weird, edgy quality it showed in the opening. It dries down as satisfyingly as it starts out, and for me it's amber bliss.

Even more than the amber, I love the oud, which has surprised me. Oud is so over-exploited now that I cringe at the sound of the word. Everyone has a wonderful new oud, which smells no more or less wonderful than the last. Oud seems to have finally given niche perfumery the excuse it was apparently looking for to boost its prices laughably high. It was a real dilemma: how do you package perfume in the same old bottle but charge more? Oud answered the question, however insipidly. You import "costly" oud "essences" from the East. We are now in the Baroque Oud period, where niche lines release their second, third, and even fourth oud fragrances. Their last oud smelled like every other, but they convince someone (if not me) that they have something new to say with the material, which is invariably synthetically composed, no matter the claims of faraway and hard to reach origins. Nothing is hard to reach anymore, but oud convinces us that state of covet versus lack still thrives, right under our noses.

Ambre Dore is an oud fragrance which doesn't scream oud. No mistake, you smell the oud in it, but it's incorporated as a supporting player - perhaps because Soir d'Orient came out at a time when oud wasn't something to write, let alone leave, home about. Ambre Dore used oud with the kind of subtlety that no modern oud release can really afford to, and wins me over for that. It's a pretty exceptional scent.

If anyone else has favorite ambers I'd love to know.

Dior Mitzah

The recent 10 additions to Dior’s exclusive range have been met with lukewarm reviews at best.  Each fragrance in Dior La Collection could easily be called “good” but what most perfume enthusiasts are reacting to is that fact that the exclusive range should, by definition, be a step above mainstream releases.

If Dior Mitzah was instead a new mainstream release from Dior, available at every Sephora worldwide, which is to say easy to find, and available in smaller less expensive bottles, I would think many perfume enthusiasts and bloggers would have sung its praises.   

I’m going to put aside expectations of what a fragrance in Dior’s exclusive range should smell like and instead evaluate Mitzah as ‘any old’ perfume released in 2010.  Here’s the thing: Dior Mitzah is a beautiful amber.  It isn’t particularly unique and I’d classify it as a functional fragrance, but it’s one helluvah gorgeous and wearable amber oriental.

I’ve noticed myself leaning towards functional fragrances over the past year.  In an effort to pare down my collection (somewhat) I’ve begun pinpointing those fragrances I love and readily wear from within each fragrance category.  I have a lot of amber orientals.  Over the years, amber orientals have been my truest love.  Recently, a great number of my favorite amber fragrances suddenly smelled too sweet, a little cloying and very, very, musty-dusty to me.  I can’t explain this change and believe me it was a pretty sad realization at first.  What I’ve come to find is that I now require a very specific sort of amber fragrance.  Ambers I love lately need to be fairly dry, slightly herbal, and not too heavy, with some spice and incense.  The ambers I’ve been happy with this fall are Alahine, Histoires de Parfums Ambre 114, Agent Provocateur Strip, Calvin Klein Obsession and maybe one or two others I’m forgetting.   

Dior Mitzah hits the spot perfectly.  While it doesn’t break especially new ground, what it does for me is fix every other amber out there that’s either “too sweet” or “too heavy” or “too musty-dusty” or “too-foodie” and instead nails the perfect balance of what I think an amber oriental should be.  Mitzah wears like a sheer veil instead of a blanket; it’s present yet light.  Mitzah has touches of sweetness but it never reaches foodie realm.  Mitzah avoids the musty-dusty aspect many ambers fall prey to (this might be due to “Ambre 83,” discussed more in two blogs listed below) .  Mitzah is not a spice-fest like Ambre Sultan or Arabie, it’s much much (much) smoother.  I’m telling you what it isn’t, but I should also tell that it is a velvety, dry, softly spicy herbaceous amber that is dreamy.  I wasn’t blown away by Mitzah the first time I tried it because it’s quite similar to so many other ambers out there.  Once you’ve smelled a few ambers, you pretty much get the idea, and everything that starts off like a typical amber seems a bit generic.  Annick Goutal Ambre Fetiche and Serge Lutens Ambre Sultan might stick out from the pack because they are so bold.  Mitzah isn’t bold; it’s tame, functional and effortlessly wearable.   I think it's gorgeous.

Notes include:  coriander, cinnamon, amber, rose, patchouli, incense, vanilla, and honey

Other reviews

Bois de Jasmin

1000 Fragrances

Olfactoria’s Travels

Alien Sunessence 2011: Edition Or D'Ambre

I don't know why--because they've largely been disappointing--but every year I look forward to all the various Thierry Mugler seasonal, limited edition flankers with the kind of excitement I imagine a teen feels waiting for the next installment of the Twilight franchise.  The flankers for A*men have been more consistently promising, and I don't have many complaints there, but, aside from the astonishingly good Alien and Angel Liqueur duo (2009), the results over at the lady counter have often left me disappointed.

For the most part, the Angel Sunessence fragrances have half the lifespan of their original inspiration and seem very nakedly to be attempts to modify for the few who dislike or hate Angel the things which make the rest of us love it so maniacally.  "Angel toothpaste!" as Luca Turin remarked enthusiastically about one of these flankers, is good for a whirl, I guess, but it doesn't exactly leave you feeling sated, or particularly clean for that matter.  As toothpastes go, it left a pretty bad taste in my mouth.  Innocent and its rather jaded follow-ups have consistently failed to even marginally interest me.  The Alien Sunessence fragrances have, on the other hand, smelled so much like the original Alien, that I had a hard time seeing the point, let alone the difference.

I approached Or D'Ambre without much hope, and at first I thought, "same old, same old".  It was only later, when it persisted much longer than even the original Alien seems to, and seemed more interesting than any of its sister flankers by far, hours in, that I came around to what should have been its very obvious appeal.

Thierry Mugler's ad copy tends to delight or grate with its fanciful silliness, depending on your mood, and I'm not sure I smell the promised "trio of wealth" at the top of the fragrance: "the wealth of vitamins, the wealth of the exotic, and the enchanting wealth of warmth."  We all love the French and admit that they are superior in the art of fragrance.  Is all this wealth not enough to buy them an English speaking think tank?  Upon first spraying Ambre, what I get is something very refreshing; if calling that a wealth of refreshment makes more sense of things to you, I invite you to do so.  For me, it's a little more specific.  Ambre offers a weird citrus sheen or zest which is not only unusual for an Alien flanker but engineered in such an unusual way that it compliments the fragrance's weird synthetic sensibility perfectly.  This metallic hesperide lasts all of ten minutes, tops, and flows seamlessly into the heart of the fragrance, a practically teeming virtual reality of impressions.

For something as openly synthetic as Alien, Ambre has a remarkable series of moods and transitions; many more than your average, supposedly superior, more allegedly natural fragrance, which typically purports to use only the highest quality raw materials.  I've always loved the synthetic qualities of Alien, the way it feels super saturated and weirdly succulent without losing that unique cyborgian effect, like something Sean Young's character might have smelled of to Harrison Ford in Blade Runner, a simulation of memories combining childhood sunsets, his mother's jasmine perfume, and the new patented Sumolinoline Vinyl upholstery of his hovercraft.  Alien absolutely feels half human, half mechanical to me, and I love that, and what made the liqueur version so compelling, aside from the fact it smelled like a million bucks, was the sense it gave of taking those synthetically engineered qualities and aging them like a fine liquor, giving them a richness that screwed around with your mind the way someone implanting memories might.

Ambre takes those pastoral-domestic fantasies, those memories of things you might or might never have experienced, and carries them in a tote bag to the beach.  Distinctly summery, it smells, somewhere in there, of sun and suntan oil on skin and the heat bearing down on your closed eyelids.  The fragrance shifts over time on your skin, sticking with you the way the experience of the beach does by the end of the afternoon, when the salt of your sweat has mingled with the oil you applied throughout the day, and your feel somewhat crunchy and sated from the effects of the wind, heat, and sand.  It's an interesting take on amber, applying the Alien sensibility to it, and conceptually it is far stronger than any of the Sunessence flankers have been.  It feels very much in keeping with the original Alien's creative agenda and yet extends it in an interesting direction, exploring slightly different territory.

Ambre is credited to Dominique Ropion, and like much of what he does it has remarkable longevity.  For an Eau de toilette Legere (all the Sunessence flankers are) it has tremendous staying power and feels exceptionally rich, long after application.  While it becomes increasingly subtle as it wears on, it never feels weak, nor watery, as many eau legeres do on me, particularly those which feature some kind of citrus aspect.  And despite the silliness of the ad copy, Ambre does indeed retain an unusual warmth throughout its development, matching the bottle's solar design in execution.  The notes listed include vanilla, orchid, amber, woods, and the wealthy trifecta of tonics up top, including kiwi, which is lost on me.  Ambre unmistakably resembles original Alien but is quite different in many respects.  Spray them side by side and you won't mistake them again.  I would argue that Ambre outlasts Alien, as well.  As for liking Ambre more than Alien, for those who didn't care much for the original, I can't say.  I love both without reservations.

Skank You Very Much: Francis Kurkdjian's Absolue Pour le Soir

I wasn't a major fan of the earliest offerings from Maison Kurkdjian. I liked them. I didn't love them with a 175 dollar passion. I didn't love them as much as the big-bosomed SA at Saks, who seemed to have taken some manager's admonition to sell "racks" a little too literally. Even her effervescent, busty personality couldn't persuade me to shell out for the scented bubbles Kurkdjian had on display. Like many people, I think bubbles are a nifty idea. I've blown my share of them. Some of the novelty wears off when you price them as luxury items.

I've been waiting for a Kurkdjian I can really get behind. I knew it would show up eventually. Absolue Pour le Soir is one of those fragrances I'm a total sucker for.

Annick Goutal Ambre Fetiche: Exceptional Amber

Day 6 of Annick Goutal Week

The Annick Goutal Les Orientalistes Collection is an excellent addition to the Goutal brand. Since the houses' fragrances consist mainly of florals, a quartet of orientals was most welcome. All four of the offerings from Les Orientalistes collection are fantastic with my favorites being Ambre Fetiche (#1) and Encens Flamboyant (#2).

The amber note is a chameleon in perfumery. Amber essential oil doesn’t exist, it’s not a real thing in nature; amber is not strictly ambergris (ambergris may be a component) nor does it have anything to do with fossilized tree sap (i.e., amber stones in jewelry). Amber is, in fact, a man-made accord, which usually consists of varying degrees of labdanum, benzoin, tonka, ambergris and oppoponax. Some amber fragrances are really sweet and blended with heavy doses of foodie vanilla – these are usually cheap smelling Bath & Body Works type stuff and not the amber fragrances I seek. I physically crave deep, incense-y, dry, resinous ambers during the fall and winter. Some pefumes that fall under my favorite amber category are: Parfums d’Empire Ambre Russe and Sonoma Scent Studio Ambre Noire. I like, but don’t love, Serge Lutens Ambre Sultan, because there’s a bit too much cedar in this for me, and I think Ambre Fetiche blows it away, it’s more fierce.

If I’m not feeling like wearing my most outrageously decadent amber, namely PdE Ambre Russe, but still want something deeply rich yet wearable my go-to amber is Annick Goutal Ambre Fetiche. Ambre Fetiche is a phenomenal brew of frankincense, leathery birch tar, dry woods, smoke with a touch of powdery (iris root) amber and vanilla in the dry down. At times, Ambre Fetiche seems less about amber and more about incense and woods. I happen to adore the strident initial blast of frankincense, birch tar-ry leather and smoky dry woods. If you were blind-folded you would never guess Ambre Fetiche is brought to us by Annick Goutal because there is *nothing* demure about it. The reviews on Ambre Fetiche are mixed and I think (once again) this might have to do with sampling practices. Ambre Fetiche must be sprayed and sprayed liberally to get the full effect. This is not to say Ambre Fetiche is fleeting because it’s anything but – it easily lasts 6-8 hours on me and the farrrr dry down is just as breathtaking in it’s own softer way as the start.

Even though there is nothing gourmand about Ambre Fetiche I always have the desire to lick my arm when I wear it. I noticed a review from The Non-Blonde, where she feels the same. There is something deeply carnal and subconscious about Ambre Fetiche. It feels familiar, like a scent I’ve known all my life and perhaps in past lives. I think it’s the resins, incense and dry smoky woods that call to mind a time long ago, when we anointed ourselves with precious salves, ointments and oils in ritualistic ways. I think of Cleopatra. For those who love this sort of fierce amber I’ve described, Ambre Fetiche is an absolute must. But keep in mind there are two sides to Ambre Fetiche, the fierce start and then the gentler dry down where it becomes a dreamy woody-amber.

Notes are listed as: frankincense, labdanum, styrax, benzoin, iris, vanilla and leather

Photos of Ambre Fetiche bottles are the brilliant works of Nathan Branch

PS: Did you notice the guy in the Cleopatra image licking her thigh? Well, the scent of Ambre Fetiche gives him the urge to lick, too.

Dior Ambre Nuit

The fourth in a series of colognes initiated and originally curated by Hedi Slimane, one time bad boy at Dior, Ambre Nuit had some steep competition. Cologne Blanche, Bois D'Argent, and my favorite by far, Eau Noire, were basic but rich, presented in almost industrial looking, over-sized bottles. They were made to be worn generously, using a grade of ingredient which made a little go a long way. The colognes were hard to find and filtered out into the market the way niche lines do, primarily by word of mouth. The perfumers involved delivered some of their best work, indicating the kind of artistic freedom a niche line typically provides. Bois D'Argent was Annick Menardo at her best, revisiting themes and motifs she'd explored more commercially in Hypnotic Poison (also Dior), Bulgari Black, and Body Kouros (Yves Saint Laurent). Francis Kurkdjian hadn't done much at the time, unless you consider how many units two of his earliest creations, Gaultier Le Male and Narciso Rodriguez Her, moved off the shelves. His Eau Noire remains, for me, the most skillfully imaginative use of the immortelle note in fragrance, and was ample indication, way back in 2004, that Kurkdjian had the strength of vision and a recognizable enough fingerprint to create his own line.

Slimane had strength of vision too, and helped to make Dior Homme stand out in a marketplace where name alone increasingly mattered less. Perhaps he was a bit too visible. He left Dior in 2007, and the indication until now was that the line, at least vis a vis fragrance, lost not just the sense of vision he'd provided but any vision whatsoever. Their next moves seemed more like stumbles. Dior Homme Sport, while perfectly nice, was a fairly insipid flanker to Polge's brilliant Dior Homme. Packaging it in the same bottle seemed majestically ill-judged. It was hard to imagine pale, pencil thin Slimane on a treadmill, cigarette dangling out the corner of his mouth; intentionally or not, this was the picture Sport drew. Fahrenheit 32, also perfectly nice, was either a step back or a standing in place.

Until now, the cologne series languished. It lay so still I thought it was dead. Word of Ambre Nuit filled me with cautious dread. Surely the world could do without another synthetic amber. They'd already taken the edge out of Dior Homme, grafting a little red racing strip onto what felt like a spaceship by way of a Bentley. Surely someone with the freedom to use his head realized that bastardizing sleepers this way did the line as a whole no favors, whatever the immediate gain by association. Maybe the series was better off dead, but no one seemed willing to protect its grave from vandalism.

There was every reason to expect the worst, and things beyond Dior have gotten equally grim, especially in terms of masculine fragrance, so the quality and pleasure of Ambre Nuit isn't just a surprise but a real blessing. To call it cologne is an understatement. Like the others, Ambre Nuit lasts better than most toilet waters. It feels and smells rich and textured. The clear liquid is packaged in honey-colored glass. It sits comfortably between masculine and feminine. François Demachy has created in Ambre a spiced rose which makes as much sense on a woman as a man. And what a rose. In an interview with the Fragrance Foundation, he listed rose as an exact scent he would one day like to capture. "Just when you think you know everything about [it], there are always new things to discover," he said. Ambre Nuit isn't by any stretch a photorealist rose. It doesn't aim to be, but it feels like some kind of discovery along that path Demachy is traveling.

In the same interview, he admitted he has yet to master the use of cumin in fragrance. While admitting it can work wonders, he hasn't discovered the right proportions. I don't get the sense there's cumin in Ambre Nuit, but it offers ample evidence that the perfumer uses spice notes carefully and intelligently, practicing restraint where others exercise indulgence. Ambre Nuit feels just right in any number of ways, resulting in an infinitely satisfying wear. The dry down doesn't offer much development. Ambre Nuit is in the end what it was from the beginning, a song you play on repeat all day because you love it so much. There are resins in there, those spices, rose, a nice, mellow amber. The fragrance has the soft feel of leather to it, adjusted by woods and patchouli. It isn't a show-stopper. It isn't incredibly cutting edge, though it is without a doubt more interesting than 99 percent of its mass market peers. It strikes an interesting, precarious balance. Demachy addresses the need for vision as perfumer at Dior, but seems well aware of the need for the walk along that tightrope.

Dior is a context, ultimately, and any story Demachy wishes to tell must somehow serve to advance that larger narrative. He's interested in refining parts of the story, essentially. "I'm not saying I have a particular vision of perfumery," he says, "but at Dior certain types of perfumes are expected and, most of the time, created." What the brand has sometimes lacked is more of a hand-crafted feel, in his opinion. Despite their current vogue, perfumers aren't an elite but an imaginative group of skilled artisans, assigned the responsibility to create not just effect but substance, a synergy between the two poles. More personal, hand-crafted products might not sell very well, but they provide a backbone of quality and in their own ways provide subtext to the brand, adding detail and nuance to the sweeping plot points of the master narrative which is Dior. Ambre Nuit shows a lot of respect to the line but has the good sense to demonstrate some amount of idiosyncrasy as well. What it adds to the story is character.

Well Hello, Sunshine: Alahine (Teo Cabanel)

Smelling Alahine for the first time was a unique moment for me. I can't remember the last time I responded so emotionally to a perfume, when the clinical part of my mind was so swiftly bypassed, the more associative part so thoroughly ignited. Alahine is that rare fragrance for me, managing to meet my expectations without sacrificing the element of surprise.

What you do expect, from the raves on various blogs and boards, is an amber oriental. What catches you off guard is the mercurial development of the thing. Alahine goes through so many stages that at various points throughout the day I imagined I must be smelling something else I couldn't remember putting on. It has the complexity of (and more than a little resemblance to) vintage Bal a Versailles. They share a balsamic warmth, though Alahine remains sunnier. Bal a Versailles, if sunny at all, is constantly threatened by clouds. It retreats into a darkened room, becoming more insular. Alahine has its own drama, but it's a drama played out in the open, in broad daylight. The colors give away these differences, the one lucidly gold, the other a more inscrutable reddish brown. For me, Alahine is the untroubled person Bal a Versailles once was.

Granted, it's a setting sun, a rich, sulfurous gold. Out the gate, it seems to me more aldehyde than amber. The florals are hazed, one of those gorgeous old soft-focus photos, the light flaring in star shapes, the flowers amorphous arrangements of color. Those florals pop, but with the kind of impressionistic fuzz you find in Cinnabar. It's a fantastic opening, and I would be happy dwelling indefinitely there. It does last a while. Gradually, things go even softer, becoming what some have characterized as powdery. I don't get that so much. There are far more powdered fragrances. What Alahine becomes is more humid, muskier, than that. Hours on, it's working magic across the skin, shifting the subject from flowers to to field.

The later stages of development are where I get the vanilla, the benzoin, the patchouli. These have the most interesting, extended conversation with each other, sometimes murmuring, sometimes getting a little more excited, projecting what they have to say. Between this and the opening come rolling impressions of rose, jasmine, and (particularly, for me) orange blossom. These aren't so pronounced that you can single them out with any kind of confidence, but you don't exactly want to anyway. Alahine is about this particular harmonious convergence, a sum of its parts in the best possible way. You forget for a second what any of these things smell like by themselves.

I'd also like to point out how sublimely unisex it is. This stuff would smell good on anyone. It seems custom blended for the person who happens to be wearing it the way a period feels inevitable at the end of a well written sentence. Abigail wrote me to say I should give Alahine time, not because I might revise my initial opinion but because it's something that you grow to understand over time. I believe that. After a year, she realized it was her holy grail, and she hadn't really been looking for one. I'd just been thinking the same thing, so I can't imagine where I might be in twelve months.

Abigail's review here.

becker eshaya golden amber

Last week I suggested that b.e. golden amber is the D&G Light Blue of ambery scents. By this, I meant that b.e. golden amber is simple, easily worn and ultra pleasing. I was thinking about golden amber because my colleague, Susan, who is my current perfume-project, has been wearing the sample I gave her. It smelled absolutely wonderful on her. If I hadn’t known what it was, I would have been knocking on her office door, or trailing after her like Pepe Le Pew.

Fragrant amber has been on my mind. It was ironic that Brian posted about amber fragrances today (the post below this one). It seems true amber essential oil doesn’t exist; the amber scent in perfumery is typically a synthetic aroma chemical or an umbrella term used to describe several fragrances used together resulting in an “ambery” scent (e.x., labdanum, benzoin, tonka, ambergris, oppoponax). Fragrant amber is not the fossilized bronze-orange colored stone nor is it ambergris. Ambergris, by the way, comes from the lining of a sperm whale’s stomach which is said to smell horrendous at first but beautiful once dried.

I found the following, very basic, definition for fragrant amber from Wikipedia: “a large fragrance class featuring the sweet animalic scents of ambergris or labdanum, often combined with vanilla, flowers and woods. Can be enhanced by camphorous oils and incense resins.”

It seems, most likely, that there are natural elements to fragrant amber; one being labdanum, which is, indeed, a real essential oil. Labdanum (also called Cistus) is an essential oil from the rock rose shrub. Also ambergris (or the synthetic version of it) usually provides a salty quality.

The scent of amber varies fairly drastically; it can be sweet, pungent, musty, salty, spicy, woody, resinous, warm, animalic, balsamic and so on. To say that amber is a fragrant chameleon is an understatement, however, for me, one similarity amongst all ambery scents is that they are comforting. Amber is a staple in my perfume wardrobe and I have a big collection of scents falling under this scent category. My absolute favorite is Teo Cabanel Alahine, which is a stunningly sophisticated ambery scent with a dry, aldehydic Chanel-esque quality. Other ambers are more rugged and complex, paired with tobacco, woody and earthy elements, such as Parfum d’Empire’s Ambre Russe, Sonoma Scent Studio’s Ambre Noir and Serge Lutens Ambre Sultan. On the opposite end of the spectrum are the uber-sweet ambers, such as Estee Lauder Amber Ylang Ylang or just about anything ambery from Bath & Body Works.

The beauty of becker eshaya golden amber is that it’s a middle of the road amber. It’s not very sweet nor is it especially earthy or challenging. I noticed when Susan was wearing golden amber that it’s pleasing yet stands out as something unique. When I smell golden amber on myself (close up) it starts off with mild citrus top notes then settles into a beautifully salty-sandy-floral amber with just the suggestion of a spicy woody side that allows the overall fragrance to stay dry.

To sum it up, I think becker eshaya golden amber is a gem. It is easy to love and easy to wear. It’s definitely not a sweet syrupy amber nor a deeply resinous, vanillic or woody amber. Golden amber is delicate and light yet manages to be a tenacious little critter. The addition of citrus and fruit notes are well done and while perhaps not something I would have imagined to blend well (pre-sniff), it totally works

golden amber notes: mandarin, bergamot, lychee, jasmine, golden amber, sandalwood, cashmere wood, patchouli and musk.