Anatole Lebreton, anyone?

[Colin Maillard]

Does someone know this perfumer here? I found no threads about this French newcomer, but I think he's worth one.

He has three scents so far in his line, Eau Scandaleuse, Eau de Merzhin and Bois Lumière which I think is not out yet. i am testing Eau Scandaleuse right now:

... and all I can say is that is one of the nicest leather-floral scents I have ever tried, it's a nostalgic, Germain Cellier-esque take on that accord - specifically, leather and tuberose. The tuberose note is a bit weaker than I expected, but still keeps a strong narcotic feel, and the leather is just great, miles above that safraleine-burnt soup-melted rubber leathers we're used to today. Raw dusty tanning leather with a lot of unpredictable facets and nuances, from anise to coffee and from wax to powder. Simple but great.

(he's not a friend and I'm not a retailer, just wanted to share with you this, as he's not in the Directory yet...)

(and the pic is not mine, I've a crappy and un-photogenic sample)

 

[hednic]

Is there a website that is currently selling these?

 

[Colin Maillard]

Is there a website that is currently selling these?

As far as I know, you can contact him on Facebook (or mail, but I don't know the address - I think he runs a blog with all details for purchases), and he'll send you a bottle. He has no official distribution yet, although since his popularity is growing, I guess he'll have one soon.

 

[hednic]

Thank you for the above info.:thumbsup:

 

[iris&oud]

Got an email from Lucky Scent saying they are carrying this line now. Did anyone else have a chance to sample any of the three scents?

 

[Buzzlepuff]

Tried the three released and they are all very well done, living, evolving, multi dimensional scents. Clearly all are overachievers from emerging star perfumer Anatole Lebreton. Who? Anybody? My favorite was Bois Lumiere (uplifting radiance in woods) but am feeling haunted by L'Eau de Merzhin (dry galbanum / violet leaf / hay ) and hit on by L'Eau Scandaleuse (Davana/ tuberose + castoreum / leather).

 

[hednic]

Tried all three a week ago in Paris at Jovoy Parfumerie. All were very nice smelling and well made IMO.

 

[thebeck]

Does someone know this perfumer here? I found no threads about this French newcomer, but I think he's worth one.

He has three scents so far in his line, Eau Scandaleuse, Eau de Merzhin and Bois Lumière which I think is not out yet. i am testing Eau Scandaleuse right now:

... and all I can say is that is one of the nicest leather-floral scents I have ever tried, it's a nostalgic, Germain Cellier-esque take on that accord - specifically, leather and tuberose. The tuberose note is a bit weaker than I expected, but still keeps a strong narcotic feel, and the leather is just great, miles above that safraleine-burnt soup-melted rubber leathers we're used to today. Raw dusty tanning leather with a lot of unpredictable facets and nuances, from anise to coffee and from wax to powder. Simple but great.

(he's not a friend and I'm not a retailer, just wanted to share with you this, as he's not in the Directory yet...)

(and the pic is not mine, I've a crappy and un-photogenic sample)

I'm sampling this today. I didn't not see your thoughts about this scent until I went searching to find out if anyone else reviewed it yet.

All I can say now is I totally agree with you word for word. I'm enjoying it right now. Really well blended with good quality ingredients. Unique, and a nice addition to the art of perfumery.

This one's so good, I just had to order samples of the other two.

UPDATE:


Sampled the other two. All three are extremely good. Makes you wonder why so many houses just make such dismal scents , Here's a brand new company with three winners.

L'Eau de Merzhin - This is the best of scents using the aubepine/hawthorn note. For those of you enjoyed the long discontinued Aubepine Acacia by Creed - L'Eau de Merzhin is actually better. There's no mention of it, but I wouldn't be a bit surprised if Aubepine Acacia was Anatole's inspiration for this scent. Either consciously or unconsciously. Nothing like it, and hauntingly addictive to my nose.

Bois Lumiere is an aromatic, herbaceous dry woods scent with just the right amount of honey to balance it all out. hawk thought it was a little heavy. I think it's just right.

There's a degree of sophistication and panache in these scents that I rarely smell in todays perfumes. I can't really say why, but there seems to be something that's just inherently right about these. Since I love all three, I've decided to buy all three. That's a first for me - three scents from one house. I really just wanted to pick the one I liked best, but I ended up liking them all the same. Oh well.

You gotta love it. Supposedly he's a blogger gone perfumer. I love it when a newcomer comes out hitting home runs.

 

[TNBLUEMIKE]

Very good information. I will be on the lookout to try these.

 

[hednic]

Very good information. I will be on the lookout to try these.

Luckyscent now carries them.

 

[hawk]

I just tried all 3 and I think l'eau scandaleuse is my favorite from this trio. Smokey leather mixed with florals, yes tuberose is there but it's not aggressive. This is NOT a linear scent and you'll be able to detect the different top, mid and base notes... Everything is well blended and the leather gets stronger when it dries down. It reminds me of another fragrance that I have smelled before but I just can't remember which one!

L'Eau De Merzhin smelled green, like grass, hay and leaves... I didn't care much for it.

Bois Lumiere was resinous, somewhat animalic... beeswax and honey notes made it a bit too heavy.


I'm not sure those are for everyone so don't blind buy them is all I can say for now. I think they need to be sampled a few times before one can fully understand them.

 

[CapriDog]

Anyone else have tried these? I am tempting to order a sample

 

[awayalonealong]

Very impressed with Bois Lumiere. There's a lot of light in the woods as they open, but shocking and delightful is the frag's animalic development. Oh, and how about this for longevity: 10 hours. In fact, I can still smell just a tinge 24 hours later. The "EdP" label is not a ruse.
Based on this initial experience and the oooh's and ahhh's of my fellow fragrance lovers, I'll now give the other two a try. (This is why I do a lot of sampling. The rewards, if sporadic, are so pleasurable.)

 

[Buzzlepuff]

Have been wearing Bois Lumiere for a couple months now and it is a great one. The mix of dry woods swirl with the honey & beeswax for a dry but dangerously attractive fragrance. Bois Lumiere has become one of my collection favorites. I like the other two scents, but haven't purchased these yet. Le Eau Scandaleuse is a fruity, floral leather scent with a howling animalic base note that will make the hair stand up on the back of your back. You now how some of the leather of days gone by were feminine but had enough growl to appeal to either sex as long as they could handle the excitement - well this is one of those. Initially I thought this is a woman's scent, but any man can wear it and the leather note is excellent. Le Merzhin was my least favorite but it is still quite intriguing - dry violet leafy and green. All three of his scents have tons of character - there are no "me too" chords in these perfumes. Highly recommended!

 

[ClaireV]

I reviewed these recently (all three plus the new one, Incarnata) on my blog, but there doesn't seem to be an entry for them yet in the directory, so I will just drop them here! Apologies for the usual wordiness - I am working on it, I promise....

Recently I had the great experience of testing all four perfumes in the sample kit offered by Anatole Lebreton. You can order the sample set straight from his site (http://www.anatolelebreton.com/boutique/set-dechantillons/) for €6.50 delivered within Europe (which is a great deal!). Here are my thoughts:

Bois Lumiere

Bois Lumiere begins with a green, slightly wet honey – a bit dirty, as if it’s just passed from the arse-end of a bee onto your skin. But that slightly awkward phase passes quickly, transitioning smoothly into a soft, dry haze of a scent - a sort of paean to lazy summer days spent lying amongst the tall meadow grasses, making daisy chains with your children. Tender and melancholic, Bois Lumiere pairs a sour-ish honey with sun-bleached woods and a dry immortelle note that smells more like dried hay than the usual maple syrup. What is interesting is that these slightly green-gold hay notes get submerged into a thick pool of beeswax, the whole scent turning on a dime from dry grass one moment to molten wax the next.

The notes make it sound like it’s heavy – but it’s not. It’s a luminous, almost transparent wear, with a scent close to the feel and smell of the steam coming off a cup of chamomile tea. In fact, when I sniffed this blind, I thought the immortelle was actually chamomile – there is a dried hay aroma to both. There is a charming rustic feel to Bois Lumiere, a sort of idealized picture of a day out in the country. I find this to be a characteristic of the four Anatole Lebreton perfumes I’ve tested – they all paint a very specific landscape or scene, using childlike brush strokes in the faux-naïve style to bring out primitive emotions and memories in the wearer. They’re real heart-tuggers, these perfumes.

Since it is a honey scent, is it animalistic? Well, yes, but only in the sense that the honey we eat at breakfast still has the heavy scent of the bee about it. Bois Lumiere is suggestive in the same way as the rose-honey-wax notes in Cologne Pour Le Soir are: not smelling of either urine or sex, but of the sweet and sour aroma of silk stockings slowly peeled from heated flesh, complete with the enticing scent of clean female fur at the end of a long day. That Bois Lumiere ends up in the same flurry of the warm vanillic resin of benzoin is another line drawn to the wonderful Cologne Pour Le Soir. Is there room for another slightly sour, slightly animalic honey-beeswax-benzoin perfume in my life? Maybe, just maybe…..

L’Eau de Merzhin

L’Eau de Merzhin is the standout of the Lebreton line, in my opinion. The opening has all the dewy, wet, greenness of real-life plants and grasses, as well as the unpretentious cheerfulness of meadow flowers like daffodils, mimosa, and wood violets. It is an opening thick with pollen and crawling with life.

It also strikes me that this could be the inverse of Bois Lumiere, in that L’Eau de Merzhin starts off in the damp undergrowth of a meadow at dawn and Bois Lumiere is the same meadow at high noon, complete with the honeyed smell of sun-baked hay. The opening is almost hallucinogenic in its dripping-wet, juicy ripeness, and I’m reminded of the breath-taking beauty of other famous floral openings, such as De Profundis and Ostara. Despite myself, I am moved, oh, I am moved! I am such a sap for openings like this.

L’Eau de Merzhin loses most of this stemmy verdancy when it transitions into the heart, which seems (to me) to share a common accord with Bois Lumiere, specifically that steamy chamomile tea or sun-baked hay aspect. But where the hay in Bois Lumiere is wrapped up in a sweet, molten beeswax and syrupy, grassy immortelle, giving it a sort of golden, lazy afternoon sort of atmosphere, the hay or chamomile tea aspect here is greener and more herbal. I sense the juicy, snapped-stalk touch of angelica here. Heading off into the drydown, the galbanum adds its pine-like coolness, as well as a touch of lime peel.

It’s great. Something about the midsection gives me pause for thought, though, as it reminds me strongly of the mossy, slightly soapy neroli-inflected musk in the dry down of Acqua di Parma’s Colonia Assoluta, even though there don’t seem to be any notes connecting the two. Perhaps there is some unlisted white musk in this, or even some neroli, who knows? Anyway, the mind association, however tenuously or incorrectly made, happens to be a pleasant one, as I’ve owned and loved Colonia Assoluta in the past. I would actually consider getting a bottle of L’Eau de Merzhin in the summer as a replacement for my Assoluta – I think it would work brilliantly, me horsing around with the kids on the beach, and smelling like salty hay, wet green grasses, and moss.

Despite what I’ve said about the greenness of this fragrance, though, the prevailing feel in the dry down is that of a sweet, grassy creaminess – there's no sharp green sting in the tail here, just an utterly comfortable wear that happens to evoke a dew-wet meadow and the shadows of a forest edging it.

Incarnata

Incarnata is supposed to evoke the scent of a vintage lipstick, and for a few moments it does, with the quasi-stale mien of cosmetic wax created by that clash of sweet violet (or rose) and stern, grey orris root we’ve seen before in every cosmetic scent from Misia to Lipstick Rose. The only difference is that Incarnata ramps this lipstick accord to the nth degree, and it’s rather fun feeling like you’re being pressed up against a wall by a giant tube seething with violet ionones and iris rhizomes. It’s a lipstick on steroids, yo.

The heart is something I’m not so keen on. If this lipstick was a person, the middle section would be that awkward teen phase, complete with angry outbursts and the occasional bout of violence. Basically, Incarnata sidesteps the pillow-soft landing normally used in lipstick scents and instead pairs a rather black, aggressive myrrh with a sharp raspberry leaf note and a green-ish amber, fusing them into a sharp, almost mint-like green resinousness that slices through the cloud of lipstick prettiness like a shark fin.

The resin adds vigour and backbone to what might otherwise be (eventually) a very bland cosmetics accord. It’s bright and fresh, which is not something you can normally say about myrrh or amber. But on the other hand, the slight mint and vetiver undertones are simply unpleasant to my nose – there is something too jutting about the combination. I am left feeling like I am wearing a smear of old lipstick, cut with the brackish, stale vase water from a bunch of mint that someone left out on the kitchen windowsill for too long. I feel a bit cheated - I came into this expecting lipstick and a bed stuffed with rose petals and white musk with which to break my fall, but instead I've cut my foot on a broken bottle.

The drydown is a return to the lipsticky waxiness of the start, but now dialed down to a hush and supported by a very fine, iris-tinted suede (or suedois) base. It is creamy and slightly sweet, with only trace amounts of the green amber, resinous myrrh, and sharp raspberry notes still apparent here and there.

Still, though – that awkward midsection…hmmmm. Given my fondness for lipstick fragrances, it’s possible that I could train myself away from my aversion to the heart notes. But it gives me pause for thought. I think Incarnata is a scary, massive lipstick up front, which is what I like about it, but it loses the plot after the topnotes fade away. Half the point about lipstick fragrances is that they’re supposed to be taken at face value – they are fun, beautiful in a simple, girlish way, and we are not supposed to try and make a more worthy scent out of them. Incarnata tries to inject a dose of salt and resin and beardy intellectualism into my beloved lipstick wax and it just ain’t happening. It’s a good fragrance alright, maybe too ambitious for the genre it’s shooting for. Ultimately, it’s just not to my personal taste.

L’Eau Scandaleuse

Wow – what a massive opening! L’Eau Scandaleuse barrels out of the bottle like an enraged bull, all gasoline-soaked tarpaulins and leather chaps a la Knize Ten, its power coming from a turbo-charged tuberose that smells like smoked, charred rubber. Fuel, rubber, leather, smoke – it’s all there, upfront, ready to knock you off your feet. It’s an impressive opening, making me think briefly of the opening to Lonestar Memories with its orangey creosote note and rubber-tire-on-a-fire accord.

But like with Lonestar Memories, L’Eau Scandaleuse loses all its interesting, smoky, ugly rubber bits – the bits that make it interesting – very quickly, collapsing into a pleasant orange blossom-driven leather with a musky tuberose support. I want more drama! More smoke! And for longer! Maybe I should just bite the bullet and buy Knize Ten or Lonestar Memories.

Later on, L’Eau Scandaleuse reminds me strongly of Tubereuse 3 by Histoires de Parfums, which I own and like, but have to be in the mood for. The rubbery leather chypre under-dressing continues to be interesting to me, because the rubber cuts the creaminess of the tuberose and the soapiness of the orange flower. To me, this small kernel of leather smells very much like the stiff brown coat leather (with mossy, coriander-leaf undertones) in my vintage Jolie Madame and Miss Balmain – that leaf-mulchy, murky brown-grey-green type of leather accord that feels stout and old-fashioned. It’s very 1970’s actually, and I like it. But – ack! Do you spot a common refrain here? L’Eau Scandaleuse reminds me too much of perfume that I already know and love. It’s beautiful but lacks the stinging slap of the new.

All in all, four very solid, even beautiful perfumes by Anatole Lebreton, with a classicizing bent and a respect for quality materials that is very evident. Everyone should test these, especially if you are someone who has seen what other non-classically trained perfumers have had to say in the past few years, such as Liz Moores of Papillon, and Hiram Green, and are excited to see what another talented, passionate perfume maker can add to that conversation.

 

[hednic]

Thank you for your detailed observations on these. :thumbsup:

 

[FISS80]

I reviewed these recently (all three plus the new one, Incarnata) on my blog, but there doesn't seem to be an entry for them yet in the directory, so I will just drop them here! Apologies for the usual wordiness - I am working on it, I promise....

Recently I had the great experience of testing all four perfumes in the sample kit offered by Anatole Lebreton. You can order the sample set straight from his site (http://www.anatolelebreton.com/boutique/set-dechantillons/) for €6.50 delivered within Europe (which is a great deal!). Here are my thoughts:

Bois Lumiere

Bois Lumiere begins with a green, slightly wet honey – a bit dirty, as if it’s just passed from the arse-end of a bee onto your skin. But that slightly awkward phase passes quickly, transitioning smoothly into a soft, dry haze of a scent - a sort of paean to lazy summer days spent lying amongst the tall meadow grasses, making daisy chains with your children. Tender and melancholic, Bois Lumiere pairs a sour-ish honey with sun-bleached woods and a dry immortelle note that smells more like dried hay than the usual maple syrup. What is interesting is that these slightly green-gold hay notes get submerged into a thick pool of beeswax, the whole scent turning on a dime from dry grass one moment to molten wax the next.

The notes make it sound like it’s heavy – but it’s not. It’s a luminous, almost transparent wear, with a scent close to the feel and smell of the steam coming off a cup of chamomile tea. In fact, when I sniffed this blind, I thought the immortelle was actually chamomile – there is a dried hay aroma to both. There is a charming rustic feel to Bois Lumiere, a sort of idealized picture of a day out in the country. I find this to be a characteristic of the four Anatole Lebreton perfumes I’ve tested – they all paint a very specific landscape or scene, using childlike brush strokes in the faux-naïve style to bring out primitive emotions and memories in the wearer. They’re real heart-tuggers, these perfumes.

Since it is a honey scent, is it animalistic? Well, yes, but only in the sense that the honey we eat at breakfast still has the heavy scent of the bee about it. Bois Lumiere is suggestive in the same way as the rose-honey-wax notes in Cologne Pour Le Soir are: not smelling of either urine or sex, but of the sweet and sour aroma of silk stockings slowly peeled from heated flesh, complete with the enticing scent of clean female fur at the end of a long day. That Bois Lumiere ends up in the same flurry of the warm vanillic resin of benzoin is another line drawn to the wonderful Cologne Pour Le Soir. Is there room for another slightly sour, slightly animalic honey-beeswax-benzoin perfume in my life? Maybe, just maybe…..

L’Eau de Merzhin

L’Eau de Merzhin is the standout of the Lebreton line, in my opinion. The opening has all the dewy, wet, greenness of real-life plants and grasses, as well as the unpretentious cheerfulness of meadow flowers like daffodils, mimosa, and wood violets. It is an opening thick with pollen and crawling with life.

It also strikes me that this could be the inverse of Bois Lumiere, in that L’Eau de Merzhin starts off in the damp undergrowth of a meadow at dawn and Bois Lumiere is the same meadow at high noon, complete with the honeyed smell of sun-baked hay. The opening is almost hallucinogenic in its dripping-wet, juicy ripeness, and I’m reminded of the breath-taking beauty of other famous floral openings, such as De Profundis and Ostara. Despite myself, I am moved, oh, I am moved! I am such a sap for openings like this.

L’Eau de Merzhin loses most of this stemmy verdancy when it transitions into the heart, which seems (to me) to share a common accord with Bois Lumiere, specifically that steamy chamomile tea or sun-baked hay aspect. But where the hay in Bois Lumiere is wrapped up in a sweet, molten beeswax and syrupy, grassy immortelle, giving it a sort of golden, lazy afternoon sort of atmosphere, the hay or chamomile tea aspect here is greener and more herbal. I sense the juicy, snapped-stalk touch of angelica here. Heading off into the drydown, the galbanum adds its pine-like coolness, as well as a touch of lime peel.

It’s great. Something about the midsection gives me pause for thought, though, as it reminds me strongly of the mossy, slightly soapy neroli-inflected musk in the dry down of Acqua di Parma’s Colonia Assoluta, even though there don’t seem to be any notes connecting the two. Perhaps there is some unlisted white musk in this, or even some neroli, who knows? Anyway, the mind association, however tenuously or incorrectly made, happens to be a pleasant one, as I’ve owned and loved Colonia Assoluta in the past. I would actually consider getting a bottle of L’Eau de Merzhin in the summer as a replacement for my Assoluta – I think it would work brilliantly, me horsing around with the kids on the beach, and smelling like salty hay, wet green grasses, and moss.

Despite what I’ve said about the greenness of this fragrance, though, the prevailing feel in the dry down is that of a sweet, grassy creaminess – there's no sharp green sting in the tail here, just an utterly comfortable wear that happens to evoke a dew-wet meadow and the shadows of a forest edging it.

Incarnata

Incarnata is supposed to evoke the scent of a vintage lipstick, and for a few moments it does, with the quasi-stale mien of cosmetic wax created by that clash of sweet violet (or rose) and stern, grey orris root we’ve seen before in every cosmetic scent from Misia to Lipstick Rose. The only difference is that Incarnata ramps this lipstick accord to the nth degree, and it’s rather fun feeling like you’re being pressed up against a wall by a giant tube seething with violet ionones and iris rhizomes. It’s a lipstick on steroids, yo.

The heart is something I’m not so keen on. If this lipstick was a person, the middle section would be that awkward teen phase, complete with angry outbursts and the occasional bout of violence. Basically, Incarnata sidesteps the pillow-soft landing normally used in lipstick scents and instead pairs a rather black, aggressive myrrh with a sharp raspberry leaf note and a green-ish amber, fusing them into a sharp, almost mint-like green resinousness that slices through the cloud of lipstick prettiness like a shark fin.

The resin adds vigour and backbone to what might otherwise be (eventually) a very bland cosmetics accord. It’s bright and fresh, which is not something you can normally say about myrrh or amber. But on the other hand, the slight mint and vetiver undertones are simply unpleasant to my nose – there is something too jutting about the combination. I am left feeling like I am wearing a smear of old lipstick, cut with the brackish, stale vase water from a bunch of mint that someone left out on the kitchen windowsill for too long. I feel a bit cheated - I came into this expecting lipstick and a bed stuffed with rose petals and white musk with which to break my fall, but instead I've cut my foot on a broken bottle.

The drydown is a return to the lipsticky waxiness of the start, but now dialed down to a hush and supported by a very fine, iris-tinted suede (or suedois) base. It is creamy and slightly sweet, with only trace amounts of the green amber, resinous myrrh, and sharp raspberry notes still apparent here and there.

Still, though – that awkward midsection…hmmmm. Given my fondness for lipstick fragrances, it’s possible that I could train myself away from my aversion to the heart notes. But it gives me pause for thought. I think Incarnata is a scary, massive lipstick up front, which is what I like about it, but it loses the plot after the topnotes fade away. Half the point about lipstick fragrances is that they’re supposed to be taken at face value – they are fun, beautiful in a simple, girlish way, and we are not supposed to try and make a more worthy scent out of them. Incarnata tries to inject a dose of salt and resin and beardy intellectualism into my beloved lipstick wax and it just ain’t happening. It’s a good fragrance alright, maybe too ambitious for the genre it’s shooting for. Ultimately, it’s just not to my personal taste.

L’Eau Scandaleuse

Wow – what a massive opening! L’Eau Scandaleuse barrels out of the bottle like an enraged bull, all gasoline-soaked tarpaulins and leather chaps a la Knize Ten, its power coming from a turbo-charged tuberose that smells like smoked, charred rubber. Fuel, rubber, leather, smoke – it’s all there, upfront, ready to knock you off your feet. It’s an impressive opening, making me think briefly of the opening to Lonestar Memories with its orangey creosote note and rubber-tire-on-a-fire accord.

But like with Lonestar Memories, L’Eau Scandaleuse loses all its interesting, smoky, ugly rubber bits – the bits that make it interesting – very quickly, collapsing into a pleasant orange blossom-driven leather with a musky tuberose support. I want more drama! More smoke! And for longer! Maybe I should just bite the bullet and buy Knize Ten or Lonestar Memories.

Later on, L’Eau Scandaleuse reminds me strongly of Tubereuse 3 by Histoires de Parfums, which I own and like, but have to be in the mood for. The rubbery leather chypre under-dressing continues to be interesting to me, because the rubber cuts the creaminess of the tuberose and the soapiness of the orange flower. To me, this small kernel of leather smells very much like the stiff brown coat leather (with mossy, coriander-leaf undertones) in my vintage Jolie Madame and Miss Balmain – that leaf-mulchy, murky brown-grey-green type of leather accord that feels stout and old-fashioned. It’s very 1970’s actually, and I like it. But – ack! Do you spot a common refrain here? L’Eau Scandaleuse reminds me too much of perfume that I already know and love. It’s beautiful but lacks the stinging slap of the new.

All in all, four very solid, even beautiful perfumes by Anatole Lebreton, with a classicizing bent and a respect for quality materials that is very evident. Everyone should test these, especially if you are someone who has seen what other non-classically trained perfumers have had to say in the past few years, such as Liz Moores of Papillon, and Hiram Green, and are excited to see what another talented, passionate perfume maker can add to that conversation.

Sorry to revive an old thread but I've just gotten my nose on this line; Bois Lumiere, L'Eau Scandaleuse and L'Eau Merzhin. I am a big fan of all 3 with Bois Lumiere being my favorite. Your reviews are spot on. Has anyone else sniffed this line out and if so, which is your favorite?

 

[hednic]

Has anyone else sniffed this line out and if so, which is your favorite?

Have tried them all and like you, Bois Lumiere was the one I liked best.

 

[awayalonealong]

Wordiness? Keep ALL your words, ClaireV. The evocative descriptions and illuminating comparisons are impressive. I think it's time I subscribed to your blog!

 

[Alibama68]

I've been trying out the new release called Grimoire for a few weeks now. It's bergamot (?) engulfed by dust, evocative of an old book as the name suggests, but not just confined to recreating that specific association... creating a sense of sand. Perhaps a variation on Incarnata's opening, removing that overpowering lipstick? It gives me a calm feeling of an assured accord, but paradoxically something makes me feel restless or on the edge of my seat - so not one to apply before going to bed for me anyway. I don't have a lot of experience with perfumes of this type, (I like Dior's Dune vintage) but I feel this is a distinctive perfume, and Anotole has found a unique accord, that makes it a special find for me. Although I liked the other ones in the line, this one is gentler, but still has the line's focus on classic vintage. My favorite by him, but not everyone is going to enjoy smelling dusty. Available via his website as 50ml or 2ml.

 

[hednic]

Have yet to try the new one yet but looking forward to.