Feu Secret
Fzotic (Bruno Fazzolari) (2017)

I think of Feu Secret as an iris scent, mostly for the noticeable soft iris from orris butter. The vanilla turns it softly sweet and the eucalyptus, cedar and birch tar keep it cleansing and cold. The contrasts here of expansive orris notes, green woods, sweetness and hardness make for a nice self reinforcing presence - a self igniting flame or a secret fire of sorts - Feu Secret. But after wearing this often I still think of this as an iris scent with a touch of vanilla and a cooling balance of eucalyptus, cedar and spruce. There is a friendly feel to this Feu Secret that is lacking from other similar iris and woods scents such as Divine L'homme de Coeur. A very nice fragrance from Bruno Fazzolari!

Feu Secret is a wonderful fragrance created with expert care by Bruno Fazzolari. I love the opening the most as it fills my senses with resinous spruce and a slight zing of eucalyptus, but it's just the right amount of eucalyptus because too much can ruin an otherwise good fragrance. The orris butter brings a slight metallic sheen and the birch tar helps ground the bright notes while still letting them stretch their wings and fly at just the right altitudes. The cedar and especially the vanilla also bring a comfort as Feu Secret just keeps doing it's wonderful thing for about 8 hours on my skin. This as I said is truly a marvelous fragrance that I'm so happy to own. I feel a bit like Gandalf as I am also a keeper of the secret fire! I'll bet my secret fire smells much better than his though. :-)

Two thumbs way up for Feu Secret!

Bruno Fazzolari is a San Francisco-based artisanal niche perfumer of great talent and unique vision. His compositions are not always friendly, nor tend to follow contemporary stylistic lines, but do offer both glimpses into past styles and unique perspectives on genres previously tackled by other niche houses long since moved on from the more artistic aspects of niche perfume and into "haute luxe" prestige-focused perfume. Feu Secret (2017) decidedly goes in the latter direction, tackling the often-cold subject of an iris-focused perfume in a woody floral format. Niche perfumes have been doing this since the extremely unfriendly Serge Luten's Iris Silver Mist (1994) first hit the scene, with entries like L'Eau d'Hiver by Editions de Parfums Frederic Malle (2003) being softer and L'Attesa by Masque (2016) being a return to the harshness of the Lutens. Since that house has since left behind its experimental era and headed into the more-lucrative world of prestige-priced but more easily-digested perfumes, houses like Masque and now Fazzolari have picked up the mantle to continue pushing the boundaries of this genre. Bruno chooses to eschew the standoffish qualities of this mini-genre of orris/iris scent by playing a cat and mouse game with cool iris and warm violet. A ceremony of opposites this perfume is, and I find that extremely fascinating, but a people-pleaser this fragrance is not.

What makes Feu Secret so interesting, is that it seeks to create a dichotomy of hot and cold within the context of an iris woody floral, but the very title of "secret fire" hints at this with its alchemy reference. Orris butter is the key to delivering the sleek, heartless iris note in the opening, and it acts as a sort of olfactive glue for the entire scent, as this iris/orris note always sits on top of whatever else is going on as the dry down commences. Orris butter isn't the coldest interpretation of iris, so eucalyptus offers that bit of cool, playing the first series of contrasts in Feu Secret. The notes of violet, pink pepper and turmeric offer a bit of floral brownish dirt-speck spice to push the needle back into the red. This isn't the leafy violet of mainstream pefume, but a dry, desiccating violet that joins cedar and spruce to push warmth factor, to keep the iris and eucalyptus from swaying the needle back into the blue. Birch tar and vanilla offer the last contrast of values as the sharp birch and rounded vanilla settle the whole thing onto skin, with the iris and pepper being the main notes detected in this end phase, as wisps of the woody cedar/spruce tandem come and go. This isn't a chypre for lack of a mossy note, and there's no musk glow either as with most woody florals not presented in a chypre format, so quite the paradoxically piquant yet steely sillage trail is created. Feu Secret lasts all day thanks to its extrait concentration and radiates more off skin the more heat is applied. A little bit old-school, but made with modern ingenuity, Feu Secret is a true example of niche perfumery.

Fans of iris and violet in intense, uncompromising presentations will likely enjoy Feu Secret, and as a rather unique perfume that places "A Song of Ice and Fire" with your nose from beginning to end, it's uncertain of who really wins the iron throne at the end of the day since even until the very end, the two notes take turns lobbing their battle mates eucalyptus and peppery woods at your nose. There is a lot of note separation but at a glance, a singular accord of sharp peppered iris not unlike what Dior likes to employ in its various entries of the Homme line greets the nose from afar, with the rest focusing into view the closer to skin nose goes. The vanilla at skin scent level is the only thing really keeping Feu Secret from being a modern take on the "ice queen" vibe many 70's feminines expressed, but the kind of fire this stokes is the furthest thing from a warm hug. Bruno Fazzolari has a way with creating perfumes that engage their wearer and make them think, especially for perfume fans who love analyzing and breaking down their favorite accords, and I feel Feu Secret is one such perfume; this is an aroma meant to be pondered as much as enjoyed. This is mostly a feminine-leaning fragrance but anyone can really try, and like with most stiff iris scents, smelling Feu Secret will either put you on your guard or start a conversation with the wearer. Considering what Lutens wants for bell jars of Iris Silver Mist these days, Feu Secret may also be a more economical alternative. Thumbs up.

Artistic. Leans towards masculine. My husband likes it and he is not a frag-head.

Cool, dewy orris and birch beginning. A tiny bit of spice. The eucalyptus is fresh without being medicinal. The base is a powdery wood but does not lean towards the feminine.

This works in summer heat. It is never cloying. Well done!

Ah!
This, is, a Fazzolari treasure, that competes
with the beauty of Au Dela Narcisse for top spot in my Wardrobe.
This time the play is with Orris.
The Star.
The other ingredients Turmeric. Pink Pepper and Eucalyptus dance around and take turns planting and taking nibbly kisses upon Carroty Accord, breaking it down slowly and drawing the attention to a halo of Cedar. Birch Tar seems subdued until I begin recognizing an incense-like accord. Yes, perhaps Birch Tar. Only a light seasoning.

Full bottle for me!

This is the nicest incense mens cologne I have tried. Better than Marly's Eau du Tigre.
It starts off fresh yet not obviously mentholly with a touch of spice. Wonderfully masculine and light. I would not class this as unisex.
It rapidly drys down to just the incense which remains light and non irritating to the olfactory passages unlike most incense fragrances.
The opening is the winner and if were thus linear it would be an instant full bottle.
As it is its not for me but if you like a very nice light incense which you can wear work/play, day/night this is worth a try.

Fragrance: 3.5/5
Projection: 3/5 It rapidly becomes a delicious skin scent.
Longevity 3.5/5

At first blush, it's a lot of Eucalyptus-- so much that my hand tingles where I have sprayed it.

But wait...

A few minutes in and it's the day after Christmas in my dad's log cabin, with the warm smells of last night's cooking, and the brisk breeze of the Illinois winter blowing in through the screen door he has left open to air the place out from last night's log fire. Cool and crisp and woody all at once. I can almost feel the breeze off the river.

I hardly know how to describe this scent. It is truly a study in contrasts: deeply-rooted iris that is also sweetly doughy, combined with bright, airy notes of eucalyptus, turmeric, and pink pepper. It feels almost like magic when a scent can be both mentholated AND musky (How does Fazzolari do this?). The fragrance somehow reads both cool and hot, earth-bound and sky-borne, vintage and modern. Feu Secret is intriguing in the truest sense of the word; I cannot pin it down or even categorize it adequately. It doesn't seem to fit into a category with which I am familiar. I simply have to keep sniffing.

Utterly unisex. This would make an incredible signature scent for a complex, ambiguously interesting person.

Feu Secret is an exploration of orris, a tricky material to describe in notes. Combined with other components in a composition it has an olfactory range of that lands it squarely in the woody-floral category. Of course orris butter can also make a perfume powdery, metallic, papery, chocolatey or yeasty depending on the angle of approach so to speak. It fixes fragrant materials so that even highly volatile topnotes coast a little bit further into the heart of a perfume.

The woody floral genre has a long history of dowdiness. To most people it is the brown tweed suit of fragrance. Practical, sturdy, steady. Pedigreed but dull. Fazzolari updates the genre and reinvigorates it. He modulates a central iris/violet accord with an astringent cedarwood and an unexpected mix of herbs and aromatics. I struggle to identify the specific aromatic materials, but I recognize their properties. Warm, chilly, piquant, bitter. The hot and cold aromatics temper the orris. They divert the iris note from its anticipated trajectory and allow Feu Secret to break from the tradition of staid woody florals.

The topnotes lead with a papery, chilled iris. This cool characterization of iris is recognizable, but Feu Secret doesn't follow a predictable course. Chanel 19's acetone, Iris Silver Mist's frozen carrot and Masque Milano l'Attesa's cardboard all lean in this direction. Fazzolari's twist is to play up the common ground of iris and violet notes, painting a spectrum from platinum violet leaf through cyanotic grey iris root to a pale mauve violet flower. In the heartnotes the frost thaws and releases a sweaty note reminiscent of both skin and dough. It's a transitional olfactory image, but one that gives Feu Secret an intimate feel. By drydown the pairing of orris and cedar create a warm unctuousness similar to creamy sandalwood.

Secret Fire is a term borrowed from alchemy, an ancient practice that summons images of wizards feverishly trying to turn base materials into gold. But alchemy was in fact an organized system that attempted to reconcile the physical world and the unseen forces that acted on it. Think of it as chemistry with a dash of physics and a huge helping of magical thinking. Secret Fire was the much coveted ability of alchemists to harness a material's hidden animating properties and transform it to their will. Alchemists famously chased a ‘universal solvent' called Azoth that divided materials into their fundamental elements and allowed them to be manipulated by alchemists who possessed the Secret Fire.

Fazzolari's universal solvent is orris butter. He uses it to reveal fundamental properties and break down the other materials into the classical elements of alchemy. Turmeric ignites and becomes fire. Eucalyptus is a cool plunge into water. Pink Pepper takes flight and dissolves into air while cedar's roots clutch the soil and become earth. Fazzolari tames the elements and creates a perfume of measured contrasts. His perfumes have a thoughtful, deliberate quality, but Feu Secret gives a glimpse further. In the 21st century artists are the closest thing we have to alchemists and their secret fire is their ability to transform us with their work.

from scenthurdle.com

I've quite enjoyed getting to know Feu Secret.

It starts with iris, flanked with orange and vetiver similar to Chanel's 28 La Pausa, but Feu has a substantial base of forest woods and amber resins, along with a large helping of buttery sandalwood.

The iris/amber/butter/forest combination is well executed - as the iris fades, the resins come through more forcefully, while there's a consistent buttery log smell that adds richness while tying it all together.

Well done.