Lettre de Pushkar
Ella K Parfums (2018)

Puskar is a destination that the Ella K line has returned to twice (more recently with Rose de Pushkar). It seems like a dream destination, swirling with saturated colours and fantasies of an imagined India. However, if the results are this inviting, I'm not complaining. Lettre de Pushkar offers a tenderly sweet rose, full-bodied and imposing but with a downy softness, wrapped in smooth, almost milky vanilla. Successfully folded into this central pairing is an array of spices that tantalizes the senses and offers a bit of grit and tension but never once becomes overassertive. And then, just beyond, as one would hope and expect, there's a perfectly expressed deep woody backdrop against which the sentimentality of the rose-vanilla pairing plays out. For me Sonia Constant doesn't put a foot wrong with this perfume – all the elements are blended, it seems, for maximum olfactory pleasure. Of course, if you don't care for ‘Arabic' style rose perfumes, you may disagree.

Whoah!! The poetic vein and artistic inspiration of the Ella K's talented nose-performer Sonia Constant is immediately evident under my profane nose (with all its legacy of exotic visited lands, new olfactory alchemie's research and gypsy travels). This dreamy juice is truly exotic and silky by its opening. More over Lettre de Pushkar succeedes where "same league" (but diverse quality) initially intoxicating (then balmy/chic) creations (a la Dior Hypnotic Poison for instance) artistically failed (despite their commercial success). Lettre de Pushkar despite its modern urban-chic spark do not fail in order to lift in the air (and root inside the soul) its touch of spicy meditative ambery orientalism.This juice opens quite intoxicating and super ambery-spicy-kind of heliotropic with evident fruity accents, a rosey dominant aura and a wet/boisé undertone provided by vetiver and cypriol oil. The evolution carries the wearer towards a less dusty but more soapy-oudish floral/musky volatile creaminess (a la Heeley Agarwood). The oudh's rendition is airy/musky and balmy, indeed. Overall the perfume is suave and silky, quite balanced and well calibrated in sweetness a la Etro Heliotrope (unlike many overly sugary and cloying musky scents of the current market). There is a secret (by now more classic) chypre rosey/musky spark under the exotic spiciness and I appreciate a lot this link with the urban musky-chic aura. This fragrance is evocative of far lands, spicy alchemies, spirituality and poetic experiences but is at same time easy to wear, down to earth, joyful, dynamic and versatile. Recommended.