[perfumeblogging] 'Borneo 1834', Serge Lutens
This was recommended to me as an alternative to Coromandel (which, as you might recall, was the scent that went to Orange Pez on my skin. I blame benzoin. I think benzoin and I are not friends.)
In many ways this was a test to see if I actually like patchouli.
Conclusions: when mixed like this? Hell yes I do. This is not a scent I would think of as being 'hippie' or 'unwashed'. It is -- refined, almost a very bold sketchwork of a scent. I think of a Japanese ink-and-brush painting of bamboo. Tropical, but stylized.
Wet it is strongly cocoa -- the baking chocolate scent, not the sweet chocolate one, the bitter architecture of chocolate -- and a BUNCH of patchouli. As it dries the bitter chocolate goes to traces, and there is cardamom and white flowers underneath. (Fragrantica says labdanum. If this is labdanum, I really like labdanum.)
A scent for summer evenings. A woman or a man who is very comfortable in a very unusual place. And I keep coming back to the blackwork sketch of bamboo. (That, and yellowed, humidified paper, curling up at the edges. A tropical archive.)
I will wear it again. (I think I really really like Lutens, as a perfume house.)
In many ways this was a test to see if I actually like patchouli.
Conclusions: when mixed like this? Hell yes I do. This is not a scent I would think of as being 'hippie' or 'unwashed'. It is -- refined, almost a very bold sketchwork of a scent. I think of a Japanese ink-and-brush painting of bamboo. Tropical, but stylized.
Wet it is strongly cocoa -- the baking chocolate scent, not the sweet chocolate one, the bitter architecture of chocolate -- and a BUNCH of patchouli. As it dries the bitter chocolate goes to traces, and there is cardamom and white flowers underneath. (Fragrantica says labdanum. If this is labdanum, I really like labdanum.)
A scent for summer evenings. A woman or a man who is very comfortable in a very unusual place. And I keep coming back to the blackwork sketch of bamboo. (That, and yellowed, humidified paper, curling up at the edges. A tropical archive.)
I will wear it again. (I think I really really like Lutens, as a perfume house.)