Dries Van Noten par Frederic Malle
Editions de Parfums Frederic Malle (2013)

What a gourmand bomb this is.

Warm milk, biscuits, lots of vanilla, sandalwood, balm and a little bit of patchouli.
Creamy, rich, cozy, thick, sweet, comfortable, sticky and sweet.

It smells of biscuits and warm milk. It is incredibly creamy and edible.
They have announced that DVN is going to be discontinued, so this looks like that DVN will be the first Frederic Malle to be discontinued.
Since it has been on my wish list for a long time, this information made me buy it immediately because I do not want to miss this masterpiece by Bruno Jovanović.

I'm not sure that there is better gourmand sandalwood than Dries Van Noten!

It smells like luxury.

A luxurious rendition of a - to me - very spicy woody gently gourmand perfume, without any of the crass maltol can bring. I love the arguments about the quality of Malle's collection being lessened by the partnership with Lauder, personally I thought it was a clever move to protect his brand from the ravages of the perfume sensors, in hope for the industry lobbying successfully at some stage to protect it self from them, and the bleak future of niche luxury perfumery, the David & Goliath fight may not end up in this arena in quite the same way as in the biblical allegory, the rising cost of ingredients both natural and synthetic is never ending for various reasons and the availability to smaller houses also more challenging every year, and now Covid exasperating those issues and footfall challenges have to make you wonder how many small houses are already in line for the chopping block.
So is there Mysore sandalo in here? my bottle is ancient as it was purchased on launch, so yes I would trust that it has, do the newer (dear I mention the dreaded B word) batches post Lauder? well considering the ethical difficulties now entwined with the glorious Indian wood I would imagine that they may have had to go a to a different country to secure it as many other houses have done too, and I also feel certain it has nothing to do with bottom line profit but ethical and responsible sourcing, so all the doubters and conspiracy theorists please take off the tin hats, sadly life is much duller and logical than is sometimes imagined! The quality of the E.D.P. collection remains outstanding - within the censorship parameters.
Anyway this is simply perfect for a chilly English autumn Sunday, cosy, warm and glam, and now pouring a glass of Glen Garioch to go with...

An adult gourmand-woody, with the emphasis on the sweet wood notes. There is a definite confectionary aspect due to ethyl maltose, but it is a little abstract and gradually subsides. The woody notes are an amalgamation of sandalwood (not Mysore), guaiac wood, patchouli fused together with vanilla. There is a creamy (but not Mysore sandalwood creamy), milky aspect that's persistent throughout. Opening note of saffron with touches of other indiscernible spices provide an interesting counterpoint to the ethyl maltose, and the woods/vanilla accord that develops later. There is a bit of development in the first one or two hours, and thereafter it is linear, with an accord of sandalwood, guaiac wood and vanilla. This dry-down is warm, cosy and comforting. It is reasonably diffusive on skin with adequate sillage, and excellent duration at over eight hours. I find the dry-down to be a tad unexciting at times, which more of a reflection of my personal taste. It reminds me of Jeux de Peau and Petits Papiers in passing, and the sweet gourmand aspects in Music for a While released later are vaguely similar. Fans of Angel / Angel Men might also find much to love here. A very refined essay on the gourmand-woods genre (with the focus eventually on the woods) that doesn't push boundaries, but the quality and execution are top notch.


4/5

Opens heavy but settles into a warm vanilla, cinnamon, apple and pear crumble just out of the oven with syrupy juice bubbling up through the crust. Smelling like a calorie laden filling and tasty desert in my books skews it from masculine to feminine.
Longevity could be an issue as it dissipates as rapidly as the pie would cool down. Perhaps that is the 'live art' part of it. Shame its at odds with the consumer. and suggests the arrogance of art for arts sake. That said its up to you whether you buy it.
I may well come back to you on this and update after I have field tested it!

For the moment:

Fragrance: 7/10
Projection: 7/10
Longevity: 6/10

Beautiful haunting fragrance that for me embodies a mysterious winter/spring evening wandering around London.

I tried it in Libertys soon after it was launched a few years ago and I still have the lovely memories of that day (window shopping in Regent Street, dining in Soho & catching a train back home at Euston).

The blend of spicy notes & jasmine with vanilla is beautiful resulting in a dark chocolate accord laced in liquor.

I have now bought the fragrance to relive those wonderful memories...

Fantastic longevity!

Thumbs up!

This scent has reminded me of strange things like warm escalators in the summer that people have spilled carbonated drinks on and left pieces of candy bars in, stuff that now lubricate the metal forever. Warm black plastic bag with banana peel is another thing that came to mind at some point. Those things weren't bad to my mind when I thought of them.

When I initially wore this for the first tens of times I found it more pleasant and approachable than I do now on my 50th wear or so. I found this to be quite an interesting, comforting, sweet, and slightly plastic smell.

The more times I wear this the more I notice the dry and dusty smell - the less I notice the creaminess, the less I notice the pleasant sweetness, and I no longer find much signs of fruitiness. The scent has become a mostly sterile, plastic, dusty and sweet thing. I start to find this fragrance more challenging to wear and less of a comfort scent these days.

For a more approachable scent from Malle I'd go with 'Dans Tes Bras' or, if it is summer, 'Music For A While'. I also find those more interesting to sniff - although I will admit Music For A While is still my most recent Malle purchase.

Dries van Noten par Frederic Malle is something I'd pick to contrast with a wet autumn day.

“All that one has lost returns... That which overflows is immediately refilled, be it in another plate and to satisfy other appetites, like one of those tiered cakes in which the bottom layer is a flaky crust which crumbles between the teeth, and the center is a pile of light biscuits...In this same way this polysemic cake...And one of the clevernesses of the story is it's grinding and rolling together of ancient history and modernity, sexuality and eroticism, privation and luxury, leavened dough and unleavened dough, urgent, friable, a light bread but heavy with future meaning....” –Hélène Cixous


My entree into contemporary perfumery was an immediate attraction to some of the oddities that are produced under the auspices of the category of gourmands. Certainly the major arcana of these scents are ruled by Angel, unparalleled in how well it works despite the improbability of the deliciousness of honey-vanilla-cocoa giving way to a sour patchouli and musk that's seriously off yet powerfully addictive to some noses. Other obvious gourmand powerhouses: Lutens, some from By Kilian, Lolita Lempicka, Annick Goutal's maple-curry Sables.

When Frederic Malle brought on Bruno Jovanovic to pay homage to the Belgian brilliance of Dries van Noten in a perfume, Jovanovic aimed for an internalization of the guiding principles of the house. Dries van Noten's fashion designs rework archetypes with a cerebral acumen that can be mistaken as casual at a glance. The garments and ethos are suffused with extravagant floral designs in luxurious textiles, recollections of uniformed boys at school, bursts of colorful intensity. Models on their runways appear dapper and daft, eccentric for sure but uncompromising in elegance.

Dries van Noten par Frederic Malle, 2013, is sandalwood dressed in finery possessing a full-mouthed edibility. Trim, tailored notes are punctuated by flounces of heavy doses that hold onto skin for hours. Saffron infused rice is my first impression, as if it were a cake, bite-sized, amidst a tasting menu with spiced biscuits and creamy woods like yogurt covered pretzels. These morsels behave magically like those petit fours that Alice consumed to grow gargantuan. DvNpFM is one of those scents that intensifies on my skin, more effusive a couple of hours in than at it's start. The question this work posits isn't ‘why would I want to smell like food?' but rather a curiosity in what happens when notes are assembled from flowers and flours, when an elaborate feast, an intricate tapestry, and a place and time (Antwerp, dessert course) are evoked.

It's not that I don't smell what people mean when they say this conjures cinnamon spiked sugar cookies. Yes, all the constitutive elements of such a thing are present, but if that was the perfume's sum total I would be bored. Instead hints of wood polish and fur, a trace of smoke from a clove cigarette, and similarly louche suggestions run the length of the scent. It's not clear to me what forms the doughy rubber sensibility at DvNpFM's center, but it's seductive and profane.

Like good gourmands do, this fragrance admits to willful cannibalism. Saturn's son's birthday wish–blowing out candles on a cake–is to be devoured by his father just as Goya fantasized. The channels between nose and mouth are celebrated rather than distanced. Oral fixations, the incorporation of the milky good breast, opting to eat in or eat out: Dries van Noten shares its special menu items, saffron gilding, jasmine cream, Hannibal's connoisseurship. Pretty as a picture. Good enough to eat.

Musk and vanilla makes an awesome digestif. Here it's the olfactory equivalent of an amorous amaro or an Amantillado sherry; trust in its sweetness is sorely misplaced; heady, heavy, a bit much, easily autumnal, filling, intoxicating.

As it's known to do, the vanillic base outlasts all the other revelers. The contours of this scene is traced in fragile caramel remnants. A monster has been sated. It's designer waistcoat puffed open. Crumbs along its lips.

This is a statement piece of a fragrance, with longevity and fineness aplenty. I have worn this every day at times (suitable for office) and also gone through times where I wear it when I want someone to slightly notice I am wearing something luscious. It's not overwrought. It has everything I like about my grandfather wearing cologne -- masculine, strong, enduring, and not too fussy or prim.