Eau Delà : Sancti : L'Eau Bénite
Les Liquides Imaginaires (2013)

The rock myrrh and frankincense incense you get in church with a hit of spkenard and faintly woody notes like sandalwood. It's 100% High Mass incense but as it dries down, the base becomes shrill and sharply awful with synthetic I-dunno-what that ruins it completely.

Subtle and lovely, calming and balanced. I could see coming back to it often; there have been many days I'd wished I had.

If you combine an oceanic airy eau de cologne with a deep woods resinous amber incense fragrance you would get Sancti: L'Eau Benite. A fragrance contradiction of light freshness and deep wood resins. Weaving top, heart and base notes for an ombre plaid of citrusy musks of eau de cologne merged and layered with conifer woods, frankincense and amber resins. Cool and warm, young and old for wonderfully light and refreshing golden and light green hued incense.

TLDR: An amazing incense in terms of versatility and wearability, prized for innocent exuberance, alive & vibrant frankincense, and finishing with calm and tranquil amber & ambergris. The energy/essence of a church youth minister in a bottle.

While connoisseurs may lament over the lack of deep & dark intrigue, I personally believe that this is not the vision behind this fragrance. The whole EdP line-- in reference to perfumer Philippe di Meo's vision statement on the box-- is supposed to be diametrically opposed. (Good/Evil, Wisdom/Insobriety, Night/Day are the exact words)

Sancti or "holy" is very much clearly in the Good/Wisdom/Day camp, and very very much geared to a scent that is conservative, delightful, refined, and clean-cut. Think young and energetic Altar-boy wearing the pure white cassock, with a spring green oxford and tie, corduroy trousers, and wingtip brogues beneath it, all tied together with the lingering scent of sacristy incense. He is solemn during the mass, and energetic and community-involved during fellowship afterwards. This scent was purposely built to capture that devout, squared-away, youthful image, and I would argue it does so quite excellently.

[I am not the most trained of noses being relatively new to this wonderful world of fragrance, so call me a layman, but I'll use terms that an untrained nose can relate to]

The top notes capture youth and innocence, there is nothing coy or seductive here, just the invigorating energy of a welcoming committee. Sancti bubbles out with pink pepper and lightly smoked citrusy scent, almost exactly like a much more mature and exotic smell of opening a fresh bottle of pepsi (not coke). The frankincense has an AMAZING accord with that peppery citrusy scent, as it prolongs that freshness way beyond what normal citrus stays around for. Someone mentioned earlier that you could almost eat it, and that is spot-on-- it is sweet without being indulgent, reminiscent of a lollipop "earned" after church, but with a lot more depth and development.

As the peppery top note bubbles down, it leaves that spicy incense/frankincense note-- but supported or propped up by some soft ambergris "pillow" background. It makes me think of the presentation of gifts; exotic spiced resin crystals, some fragrant greyed-out wood, and a small phial of sacred oil in a simple brass/gold bowl, placed on a fluffed up and lace-trimmed pillow, and carried up to the altar.

As the ceremony winds down, the final notes that remain are the warm and sweet amber, with traces of that incense providing flavor to the sweetness. It is analogous to the tranquility of a quiet sanctuary after the celebration has ended. The churchgoers are praying in silence and basking in the calm before they leave for the day.

The one "con" I will offer, and this is pretty much standard with other "light and vibrant" fragrances like it, is that its sillage is not amazing-- at least to my nose. The pepper is wonderful and refreshing, and the whiffs of incense are exciting and pique my olfactive curiosity, but after about 30mins, I have to go and look for the scent to find the wonderful story unfolding. This was nice in the summer heat when I was not looking to overdose on heady scent, and handy for not offending the coworkers in the desk next to me. But I find myself sniffing deeper and deeper into my wrist, and I worry that it will not be smelled if I apply it conservatively under my clothing/chest. Good news is, it can probably safely use a more liberal approach to application, since it is a very unoffensive fragrance.

All in all, Sancti hits its vision square on the head, though it may not be what everyone is looking for. [If you want something else (a-la dusk, bold fresh strokes of incense, richer candied sweet notes under stronger ancient wood) Fortis is part of the "Eaux Bela" trilogy and a fantastic complement for more mysterious or bold occasions, and a wonderful evening fragrance. It is STILL going super strong on my other wrist, and still drawing me deeper and deeper into it... I was just looking for a more versatile wear, and that was Sancti for me].

Best For: Daily use, versatility, fresh vibrance, summer, work & close spaces, young energy.

Not Good For: Night, super longevity, seduction, intrigue/mystery, dates/romance, power fragrance for impressing, getting tons of compliments.

Sancti is a bit of a Sahara Noir wannabe with fizzy aldehydes over a questionable base. It opens with an appealing blast of sandy resins and lemony frankincense, but there's an unavoidable whiff of superficiality about the whole thing. One point of note about this line (generally speaking) is that the packaging, the aesthetic, and the gimmick are all impeccable, but the perfumes themselves are fairly substandard – and that's the case with Sancti for me. This seems to be a trend as of late, and high end department stores are picking up some of the most insipid perfumes on the basis of packaging design and rhetorical appeal. This line does the industrial sanctament-goth thing fairly well (cue the chanting monks over a techno beat), but it's all quite transparent and doesn't take much critical thought to see what they're up to. But I digress . . .

Needless to say, this isn't a bad incense perfume, but there's much better out there. It's quite literally Sahara Noir with fizz at first, and soon after, it kicks up on the soapier resin effect (chamomile / elemi, I assume?) that Jovoy's La Liturgie and Heeley's Cardinal deploy. (I've no idea how soapy notes ever made their way into liturgical incense conversation – spiritual cleanliness?) Anyhow, Sancti is on par with the Heeley and the Jovoy in my mind – both of which are sort of blah incense fragrances in light of others. This one offers nothing new, but it's a functional enough scent that if you love the bottle design, it might be worth your while. The line clearly knows its audience, and at this point, I'm starting to think that it was conjured up for people who aren't that up to speed on modern perfumery (hence the surprising amount of knock-offs in the collection). Sancti is all edgy goth-facade but without the substance to support it. Not awful, not great, but definitely not a standout.

Sancti opens with aldehydes and a citrus/lime note transfigured in a metallic, transparent, contemporary, geometrical way, with also a tiny hint of edible-fruit (red pepper) and a base of woody and incense/olibanum – a load of Iso E Super, nothing "realistic". Then it slowly emerges a note halfway floral and minty, which gives a remarkable freshness and brightness to the main and simple accord of citrus and Iso E, bringing in also a balsamic, slightly medicinal feel, dry and rarefied like the rest of the notes, with a stout abstract feel. The citrus note finally vanishes, and the blend progressively settles on an accord of salty, metallic, light notes, with a bitter and subtle floral debris and the synthetic incense note. In short, overall Sancti is a sort of contemporary, abstract take on classic "eau de cologne" theme, more linear and dry, with an incense/olibanum twist. The concept itself is interesting, but to me, the result smells a bit plain and dull - not bad, just with a general "average-to-low" quality of materials.

5,5-6/10