After the Rain
Darren Alan (2021)

Honeysuckle in a wet green ozonic/aquatic fragrance? Hell yes! After the Rain by Darren Alan Perfumes (2007) is an extremely rare bird that mixes a very vivid honeysuckle note into a wet green leafy/woody mixture like Creed Green Irish Tweed (1985), making honeysuckle play pretty much the same starring role that violet and iris play in the Creed. This fact alone makes After the Rain wholly unique and far more interesting than 90% of such other wet and dewy lush green abstracts on the market, but that isn't even the whole of it. Mineralic elements also make an appearance here, listed as "wet rocks" by the perfumer, and on the whole, this scent is mostly synthetic, abstract, and therefore counter to much of what Darren Alan has become known for, making it all the more fascinating to me. I definitely enjoy seeing indie perfumers excel outside their comfort zones, as it gives me hope.

Opening very vividly with that honeysuckle over the usual garden-variety synthetic ozone and aquatic elements, After the Rain eventually works in some stemmy green notes that feel very much like the bitter grassiness in the aforementioned Creed. A "fern accord" powered by linalool and coumarin (the primary scent elements of lavender and tonka respectively) helps bolster the green facets into the heart, letting the honeysuckle slink quietly into the background just a bit. Mineralic musk elements and transparent clean musks do the rest, and there is little much else to say about After the Rain from a compositional standpoint, but there also isn't anything more needing be said either. Crystalline, powerful, and a bit bitter, After the Rain could be the modern friend of perfumistas who mourn the loss of Chanel Cristalle (1974) as well, as it feel pretty unisex on skin overall.

After the Rain takes the right hand turn whereas most of the darker and more saturnine fare from the house walks the left-hand path, so if something like Bathory by Darren Alan Perfumers (2017) is the devil on your shoulder, this fragrance could very well instead be the angel on the other one trying to steer you out of trouble. Should you choose to listen to that angel, you will have a bright, lucid, verdant, aqueous and stemmy floral aquatic which feels far more nuanced than its relative simplicity of design suggests, which may make it feel just a tad too designer-like for folks only wanting artisanal scents rife with rich albeit unstable naturals. This fragrance, if anything, is completely and unerringly stable, with just enough dry-down development to be satisfactory, but otherwise not changing so much once the honeysuckle, green elements, and musks find their seats at the opera. Thumbs up