New Perfume Review A Lab on Fire A Blvd. Called Sunset- Roucel Unplugged

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Back in the early days of cable when MTV played music there was a series called Unplugged. The concept was to take a music artist and ask them to play music in an acoustic setting. It was an interesting experience to watch musicians slow things down to the bare minimums. It turned songs into different entities. Most of that was due to the softening of the instruments. There was no turning up to 11. What was left was lyrics and musicianship in an intimate setting. I felt like I received a perfume version of Unplugged from one of our greatest perfumers in A Lab on Fire A Blvd. Called Sunset.

Maurice Roucel

Maurice Roucel is the perfumer I am speaking of. M. Roucel has been one of the best perfumers of the last 40 years. He has a list of masterpieces the rival of any of his contemporaries. Unlike many of them he never sought out a position as an in-house perfumer or started his own brand. He has been happy to work within the traditional paradigm of client and perfumer. When I heard he was the perfumer for A Blvd. Called Sunset I thought to myself this is as close as I will get to experiencing a perfume created by M. Roucel without a lot of oversight. The hallmark of A Lab on Fire is creative director Carlos Kusubayashi gives his perfumers the opportunity to go where they desire. What was produced is an intimate fragrance which feels unplugged.

As the name intimates this is based on the famous Los Angeles location of Sunset Boulevard. It is meant to capture a summer day when the Santa Ana winds are blowing their warmth through the city. You are to imagine yourself in a convertible on your way to the end of the street where the Pacific Ocean awaits. M. Roucel interprets this with a suite of dry ingredients to mimic the Santa Ana along with the leather upholstery of the car.

It opens with an astringent bitter almond. This isn’t the comfy toasted version, this has a hint of rawness. Violet reaches out and pulls it into its candied embrace. Adding a sweet floral shell. A fabulous dry leather accord comes next. If you’ve ever got into a car with leather upholstery after it has sat on a hot day you will recognize this. There is an expansiveness as the warm waves of tanned animal hide rise to the violet and almond. One of the very dry sustainable sources of sandalwood forms the base which has some of the severity ameliorated with vanilla and tonka bean. That last ingredient feels as if it closes the circuit with the almond from the beginning.

A Blvd. Called Sunset has 10-12 hour longevity and average sillage.

One thing which occurred to me while I was wearing this was it felt like an updated version of the leather powerhouses of forty years ago. It might be where I got some of my impression of this feeling like a softer version of something. What you will find in A Blvd. Called Sunset is a master perfumer asking you to draw closer so he can tell you a story unplugged.

Disclosure: This review is based on a sample provided by A Lab on Fire.

–Mark Behnke

New Perfume Review A Lab on Fire Freckled and Beautiful- Setting the Standard

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The last few years has seen a change in the style of perfume. It has come from a hypothesis that the younger fragrance consumer wants a lighter experience. It has ushered in an era of transparent perfumes. Because of that lightness it has been difficult to not become insubstantial in both effect and design. When it doesn’t work it is as disposable as a used tissue. The one place where this trend has been enduringly interesting is when it turns towards a floral gourmand. By adding a lightly floral veil over an aroma of an edible these have been consistently good. It is a new genre where it isn’t competing with an existing standard setter that all of them get compared to. As an observer of perfume I’ve been waiting for one I think can set that standard. I think I’ve found it in A Lab on Fire Freckled and Beautiful.

David Apel

My esteem for A Lab on Fire and creative director Carlos Kusubayashi is boundless. He has created a brand which celebrates the creativity of the perfumer hired. It has frequently inspired some of the best work by the perfumer because of the latitude provided. No focus group is going to rein in creativity here. For Freckled and Beautiful perfumer David Apel adds to that legacy.

The name of this is meant to capture the playful energy of children. This does not mean this is a perfume to be worn by a child. This is a seriously complete fragrance which should appeal to those who love fragrance of any age. Mr. Apel takes a set of sunny florals and marries them to a gorgeous flaky pastry accord.

Those florals are neroli and orange blossom. They come out early with the neroli giving ground to the orange blossom which takes over. This is a soft floral given opacity with substance because of the neroli. It keeps it from becoming too ephemeral. What comes next is that scent of the fall when pies are cooling. Mr. Apel creates a buttery flaky pastry accord. This is as I described as if it was coming from across the kitchen. It isn’t in your face, it is enticingly distant. According to the press release it seems as if Mr. Apel used some salicylates to form this which is why the orange blossom finds an ideal place to blend with the pastry accord. There is a fruitiness to some salicylates which reach out to the orange blossom. As they come together this forms the best floral gourmand accord I’ve experienced. Sandalwood with its inherent creaminess and vanilla provide the butcher block table for this fragrant treat to rest upon.

Freckled and Beautiful has 8-10 hour longevity and average sillage.

The orange blossom pastry heart of this is a perfume design marvel. It holds together without an ingredient out of place. This stands up as one of the great accords of perfumery I’ve tried. If you’re wondering whether there is a great perfume to be found in the transparent floral gourmand style seek out Freckled and Beautiful to find the current standard setter.

Disclosure: This review is based on a sample I was provided by A Lab on Fire.

–Mark Behnke

New Perfume Review A Lab on Fire Hossegor- Setting Talent Free

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Anyone who has read my writing knows how excited I get when a new perfumer catches my nose. At the end of 2017 I learned about Mackenzie Reilly with her first perfume release A Lab on Fire California Snow. She showed an uncommon skill to shift from dry to moist through precisely measured accords. I finished that review waiting to see what came next. It’s been more than a year but the release of A Lab on Fire Hossegor is that perfume.

Mackenzie Reilly

I mention in nearly every A Lab on Fire review that the creative freedom given the perfumers by creative director Carlos Kusubayashi has resulted in some great things. To allow a senior perfumer working on her first commercial releases the opportunity to bring her vision to life in this environment must be a dream for Ms. Reilly. With Hossegor she repays that faith with another perfume of distinct phases.

Hossegor, France

Hossegor is the French surf town in the southern part where the waves from the Bay of Biscay provide a mecca. Ms. Reilly wanted to capture this sense of the coastal surf village. Her vision is of walking through a forest to reach the beach. As you stand at the interface of sand and trees the waves beckon you with an aquatic come-on. You dive in watching the horizon for a swell to ride. As she did in California Snow everything I described is realized as Hossegor develops.

It starts in that seaside forest. Ms. Reilly uses as the source of her pine tree scent the resin known as lentisque. It has a pine-like smell with resinous diffusion. It isn’t sharp, it is soft. Juniper berry is used to further add some tone to the pine-y top accord. As you emerge from the forest the smell of the ocean arrives with the bite of black pepper on the breeze. This turns the overall scent into a resinous aquatic. It turns subtly as olibanum and clary sage pick up on the resin and spice. The base does the same kind of switch from arid to moist as you get closer to the water. Ms. Reilly assembles an accord of mineralic ingredients to capture the water-soaked rocks. There is the breeze of white musks off those rock walls bringing a tiny thread of green from the moss. Time to stop looking and dive in.

Hossegor has 10-12 hour longevity and average sillage.

Hossegor is a fascinating perfume of different emotional moments stitched together through the intelligent use of precise materials. I said I couldn’t wait to see what was next for Ms. Reilly; thanks to Mr. Kusubayashi her precocious talent was set free on a surf beach in France.

Disclosure: This review is based upon a sample provided by A Lab on Fire.

–Mark Behnke

Colognoisseur Best of 2018: Part 2- Perfume, Perfumer, Creative Director, and Brand of the Year

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Part 1, yesterday, was my look back at the year in broad terms. Today in Part 2 I get specific naming the best of the year in four categories.

Perfume of the Year: Arquiste Esencia de El Palacio Guayabos– Arquiste Creative Director Carlos Huber and perfumer Rodrigo Flores-Roux began their exclusive collection for luxury Mexican department store El Palacio de El Hierro in 2016. As of the end of 2018 they have released eight perfumes exploring the botany of Mexico in a set of “tree stories”. Both creative minds behind this collection have always put a little bit of their homeland of Mexico in every Arquiste release they have collaborated on. Saying that, this collection feels like there is heart and soul, along with the country, within each of these excellent perfumes.

Rodrigo Flores-Roux (l.) and Carlos Huber

During the summer I received Guayabos which immediately connected with me. I have worn this weekly since I received it. I’ve sprayed my bed with it. The poodles have inadvertently ended up smelling like it. It is one of the very best perfumes ever made by Sr. Flores-Roux.

I scheduled a call with him at Givaudan to find out how this came together. The concept was to create a guava perfume which captured the ripe guava in his house as child. As an adult the perfumer had to undertake headspace analysis of green guava, ripe guava, and guava blossom. This would lead to a layered effect which captured the esencia of guava. Jasmine and osmanthus provide the perfect floral companions over a clean woody base accord.

Guayabos is my perfume of the year because it was an obra de amor (labor of love) for Srs. Flores-Roux and Huber.

Charna Ethier

Perfumer of the Year: Charna Ethier– 2018 is going to be memorable for the excellent independent perfumer releases. The independent perfumer who had the strongest year was Charna Ethier of Providence Perfume Co. She has been one of the most consistently innovative perfumers I encounter. 2018 is the year where that quality overflowed in three spectacular releases. The first was Vientiane a study in sandalwood which was elevated by a jasmine rice tincture. Next came Lemon Liada an abstraction of lemon eau de cologne with no lemon used as an ingredient. Sedona Sweetgrass captures the scent of the American desert southwest in a photorealistic manner.

The breadth of these three perfumes is not only testament to why the indies rocked 2018 but more specifically why Charna Ethier is my Perfumer of the Year.  

Runner-Ups: Rodrigo Flores-Roux, Dawn Spencer Hurwitz, Maria McElroy, Cecile Zarokian, and Sarah McCartney

Rania Naim

Creative Director of the Year: Rania Naim– How about this for a to-do list for 2018? Take on the reformulation of one of the great historic perfumes. While doing that create four new contemporary perfumes honoring that history. That would sink most creative directors. That Rania Naim succeeded makes her the easy choice as Creative Director of the Year.

The first part of the year was given over to completing the new formulation of Jacques Fath Iris Gris. Mme Naim oversaw a painstaking effort to achieve something amazing in L’Iris de Fath. She would end up trusting a young creative team to accomplish this; which succeeded spectacularly. The decision to trust in young creative perfumers extends to the Fath’s Essentials releases where perfumers Cecile Zarokian and Luca Maffei produced two perfumes each under Mme Naim’s direction. All four exemplify the creativity still able to be found in the niche sector.

Capturing the past while living in the present means the future is all that is left to Rania Naim; my choice for Creative Director of the Year.

Runner-Ups: Carlos Huber (Arquiste), Victor Wong (Zoologist Perfumes), and Celine Roux (Jo Malone)

Brand of the Year: A Lab on Fire– If other brands weren’t going to show me something different Carlos Kusubayashi allowed perfumer Dominique Ropion to capture “The Morning After” winning an Academy award in And The World Is Yours. A long night into day encapsulated by neroli and cumin. This was followed up by perfumer Emilie Coppermann combining violet along with the De Laire base of Iriseine in a gorgeous purple flower melody called Hallucinogenic Pearl. Mr. Kusubayashi has never been afraid to release what comes of giving perfumers the space to create freely. In 2018 it makes A Lab on Fire my Brand of the Year.

Runner-Ups: DSH Perfumes, 4160 Tuesdays, Arquiste, Jacques Fath, and Jo Malone

Part 1 was my broad overview of 2018

Part 3 is my Top 25 New Perfumes of 2018.

–Mark Behnke

New Perfume Review A Lab on Fire Hallucinogenic Pearl- Bringing Back De Laire Bases

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One of the more exciting things to a perfume nerd like me has been the final acquisition of the De Laire perfume bases by Symrise. Unless you read a lot of history that sentence probably underwhelms you. Let me see if I can get you interested. De Laire was a producer of perfume bases in the first half of the 20th Century. The concept was to take the new synthetic fragrance molecules and make them into pleasant accords meant to provide the foundation for a perfume to be built upon. Edmond Roudnitska began his career at De Laire making bases. One of the most famous De Laire bases, Prunol, is married to his use of it. Others you might have heard of are Mousse de Saxe, Amber 83, or Coroliane. These are the foundations of many of the most famous vintage perfumes. Now that Symrise has cleared all the legal hurdles to put these bases back into their perfumers’ rotation I was waiting for someone to use it in a modern perfume. A Lab on Fire Hallucinogenic Pearl is the first I am aware of to do this.

One of the great things about A Lab on Fire is the creative freedom granted their perfumers. Creative Director Carlos Kusubayashi has elicited some of the most innovative work from some of our best-known perfumers. Hallucinogenic Pearl freed Symrise Master Perfumer Emilie Coppermann to look for one of the classic De Laire bases to incorporate. She decided to use Iriseine.

Emilie Coppermann

Mme Coppermann opens with the botanical musk of ambrette paired with baie rose. The gentle herbal nature of the baie rose provides just the right amount of texture to the light musk. One of the things about ambrette is it can be so light as to be too fleeting. By adding in the baie rose it adds more presence. Then the heart begins with a fabulous violet which is everything I enjoy about this in a fragrance. This is where Iriseine comes forward providing iris as the leading edge of the base. What is also here is gorgeous depth courtesy of using a base instead of the iris by itself. For those familiar with the vintage perfumes like L’Heure Bleue which feature the same duo of violet and Iriseine this is many levels softer. It is what I mean when I say I want to see what a modern perfumer can do with a classic base like Iriseine. It is a modern evolution of what a De Laire base can achieve. It finishes with light woods and some synthetic musks recapitulating the ambrette from on top.

Hallucinogenic Pearl has 10-12 hour longevity and average sillage.

The use of this historical base in a modern composition delighted me on every level. Just the shading of the Iriseine and violet would have made the perfume nerd happy. What really made me happy was in the hands of our most talented perfumers it seems like the De Laire bases are back to be used.

Disclosure: This review is based on a sample provided by A Lab on Fire.

–Mark Behnke

New Perfume Review A Lab On Fire And The World Is Yours- The Morning After Success

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There is something voyeuristic about photographs of celebrities. Certainly, there is a cottage industry of poorly taken “gotcha!” photographs taken by paparazzi. Those I have little interest in. The ones which capture my attention are the ones where well-known professional photographers have the opportunity to shoot during a particular time in a celebrity’s career. One of the more memorable pictures in that category was one taken by photographer Terry O’Neill in 1977. His subject was actress Faye Dunaway sitting by the pool at The Beverly Hills Hotel at 6AM the morning after she won her Best Actress Oscar for “Network”. Looking like she still hadn’t been to bed (she had) Mr. O’Neill captured the moment after you’ve won an Academy Award with the newspapers headlines of your win at your feet and your trophy on the table considering what’s next. It is an iconic picture for so many reasons; the early morning light, the Old Hollywood vibe, and a spectacular actress in her prime. I don’t know if this begged to have a perfume made from its inspiration but it has arrived; A Lab On Fire And The World Is Yours.

Faye Dunaway as photographed by Terry O'Neill (March 1977)

The perfumer hired by creative director Carlos Kusubayashi to take this on is Dominique Ropion. M. Ropion had converted a classic Hollywood photograph into a perfume two years previously with one of Douglas Kirkland’s photos of Marilyn Monroe. The opening to that was gorgeous but an overly aggressive musky gourmand base put me off. With And The World Is Yours that problem does not exist this is a stunning companion to the inspiration. What is especially pleasing about And The World Is Yours is that M. Ropion is not playing it safe which is apropos of an actress who won her Academy Award by also taking risks.

Dominique Ropion

What I so expected in the early moments of And The World Is Yours was a sparkly bergamot-y dawn sun kind of opening. M. Ropion embraces the “morning after” vibe instead. As the dawn signals the end of the night not the beginning of the day. M. Ropion deploys neroli and orange blossom in a weary evocation of daybreak. There is no sparkle but there is a banked luminosity to them maybe as you close your eyes to the rising sun. You also catch a whiff of yourself which is where M. Ropion uses cumin to cleave the floral duet. I adore when perfumers are unafraid to use cumin as an effective contrast as it is here. The cumin really deepens the sense of a long night’s day. It persists through a heart of rose and heliotrope. This ends on a mixture of tolu balsam and sandalwood sweetened by tonka bean and vanilla. The sweet smell of success.

And The World Is Yours has 10-12 hour longevity and average sillage.

This is one of my favorite perfumes from A Lab On Fire ever. It is near-perfect as M. Ropion never puts a foot wrong for my tastes. That being said, if you find cumin a problem in perfume I think there is little chance you will be as enthusiastic about this as I am. If you can get past it, or embrace it, what is to be found is the smell of the morning after success.

Disclosure: This review is based on a bottle I purchased.

–Mark Behnke

New Perfume Review A Lab on Fire California Snow- Palm Springs Twilight

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One of the most striking cities I’ve visited is Palm Springs, California. Post-World War 2 it became the place for Los Angelinos to have a second home and many of the Hollywood stars would spend time there. Because of this the architecture of the bigger homes in the area carry that modernist style of the late 1950’s into the 1960’s. They all have swimming pools beyond the typical rectangle. Besides the architecture there is also the geography as it sits squarely in the Sonoran Desert surrounded by Joshua Tree National Park to the east, San Bernadino National Forest to the north, the Salton Sea to the south and Mount Saint Jacinto State Park to the east. This means the scents of the desert combine with the scents of the manicured gardens of the houses just as twilight falls; A Lab on Fire California Snow captures that.

Frank Sinatra's Palm Springs home, Twin Palms

Creative director for A Lab on Fire, Carlos Kusubayashi, has created a brand where he has delighted in allowing the perfumers wide latitude to make their perfume. Until now those have all been perfumers whom have had a portfolio. For California Snow he is giving that freedom to a new perfumer from IFF, Mackenzie Reilly. When reading the bio on the A Lab on Fire website I was struck with this passage where she describes where her minimalist style comes from, “Sophia Grojsman taught me: know the ingredients you love and work with them over and over – it won’t make you boring; it will make you good!” I think this is a laudable approach to take to perfume design. It also explains why California Snow is such a striking debut.

Mackenzie Reilly

One of the things that struck me about Palm Springs is all of the glass in the architecture. It has a clarity to it which makes it feel like a crystal city. Ms. Reilly spends the early moments of California Snow interpreting that kind of transparency with a focused set of ingredients that captures the setting of the sun. By the time we pass through the sunset things cool off and the smell of the earth and the florals arise. Finally the breeze brings the smells of the nearby forest and a relaxing neighor.

California Snow opens with a very arid sage note this is made a little less astringent by using some coumarin to give that kind of hay-like sweetness to the sage. A small amount of chamomile provides the harbinger of the rose to come in the heart. Early on this is as focused a rose as the sage is on top. Over time it starts to become less delineated. The coumarin is still here to provide some of that effect. Vetiver heralds the final cooling off as a damp soil accord around patchouli takes over. In the final stages a warm breeze of musks carry the scents of the cedar trees in the forests and the smell of the neighbor smoking a joint.

California Snow has 10-12 hour longevity and average sillage.

I like the progression from warm and dry to cool and moist that happens throughout the development of California Snow. Ms. Reilly shows a deftness at making this set of transitions without it seeming abrupt. This is a remarkable first impression. I will be very interested to see what comes next as her follow-up. In the meantime I’ll sit poolside breathing in the scent of twilight in Palm Springs.

Disclosure: This review based on a sample from A Lab on Fire.

–Mark Behnke

New Perfume Review A Lab on Fire My Own Private Teahupo’o- Surfing in Tahiti

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When I was quite young my grandmother took me to see a movie called “Endless Summer”. The documentary followed two surfers on a trip around the world. My grandmother always eager for teachable moments had us look up all the locations in our Atlas. I remember when I got to the tiny island of Tahiti, barely a flyspeck on the map, it seemed like the waves we saw in the movie could swallow the island whole. If I needed reinforcement the 2004 movie “Riding Giants” revisited the tiny island with the big waves. The name of the town they surfed in was called “chopo”; except that is how its pronounced. It is correctly written Teahupo’o. I’ve always imagined the smell of tropical flowers combined with a sea spray accord would feel like riding down the barrel of a wave. A Lab on Fire My Own Private Teahupo’o tries to do just this.

Laird Hamilton riding a Teahupo'o wave

The ad copy is sort of the butterfly effect of wave creation as it mentions a single drop in Antarctica turns into a rideable wall of water in Tahiti. The rest of the copy wants to capture riding in the barrel of the wave surrounded by sea spray as the smell of the indigenous flora is carries to you. Creative director Carlos Kusubayashi collaborates with perfumer Laurent Le Guernec to create the break to ride our olfactory surfboard within.

Laurent Le Guernec

The fragrance is as simple as the description. It opens on a suite of ozonic notes and sea spray aquatics. M. Le Guernec tunes his top accord to capture the sun shining through the top of the curl while the chill of the water surrounds us as we traverse through the spray fraying on the edges. This is a common top accord done well. I appreciate the balance brought to it. Frangipani is the floral used to represent the tropics. To make sure it has the required strength M. Le Guernec supports it with a group of salicylates to build the effect up. As we cruise through the wave we catch the smell of vanilla on the breeze as the unfettered sun beams down in a warm ray of amber. This all comes together in an aquatic Oriental construct which worked nicely for me.

My Own Private Teahupo’o has 8-10 hour longevity and average sillage.

My Own Private Teahupo’o is not the first fragrance to try and translate surf culture into a bottle. It succeeds for me because when I’m wearing it I can close my eyes believe I’m on a surfboard in Tahiti.

Disclosure: This review is based on a sample I purchased.

–Mark Behnke

New Perfume Review A Lab on Fire Mon Musc A Moi- Taking Vanilla Back

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There is nothing more liberating for an artist than to have the freedom to create where your inspiration takes you. Most perfumers must follow the whims of their clients; exerting influence here and there. A true license to create without bounds usually comes when they form their own brand with their name on it. There are a few brands which also provide the leeway for an artist to do as they will. One of the more successful examples of this is the brand A Lab on Fire.

Over 10 releases since 2012 creative director Carlos Kusubayashi has taken one of the most impressive rosters of perfumers out there and set them free. The collection is one of the most diverse for a niche brand because of this. I would imagine that the process is enjoyable enough that it is no surprise that perfumer Dominique Ropion returned to do his second, and the brand’s eleventh, with the new Mon Musc A Moi.

ropion-540x304

Dominique Ropion (photo: Hajime Watanabe)

M. Ropion is on my highest tier of perfumers. My favorites by him have come from brands which trust him to carry much of the inspiration and creativity. For Mon Musc A Moi M. Ropion seems to be out to recapture vanilla from the gourmand sector of the olfactory spectrum. In recent years vanilla has become the sweet baker’s confectionary component which radiates sweetness; sometimes overly so. Which has led to many forgetting that vanilla was a vital component to many of the great perfumes from the first half of the 20th century. It was often paired with the deeper animalic musk to form a pulsing sultry base. M. Ropion wants Mon Musc A Moi to remind you that vanilla is not just for those with a sweet tooth it is also for those who want the passion of human connection.

The early moments of Mon Musc A Moi are all floral, M. Ropion floats out a mixture of peach blossom, heliotrope, and rose. This is exactly how a Retro Nouveau perfume should begin. The rose and heliotrope feel retro and the peach blossom feels more contemporary. M. Ropion lays it all out right from the first moments. Then in a very sly wink to the gourmand lovers he takes a little bit of toffee and produces a sweet intermezzo from which the vanilla appears. This is full on Nouveau. The Retro comes as the musks arise to swat away the toffee and to capture the vanilla in an amorous embrace.The vanilla musk accord is fine-tuned with a bit of tonka, amber and light woods. Those notes all serve to enhance and frame the beautiful base accord.

Mon Musc A Moi has 12-14 hour longevity and moderate sillage.

Mon Musc A Moi is a romantic fragrance and is maybe a perfume for romance. In this house it is rare anything I wear gets commented upon unless Mrs. C thinks it smells bad. There are a rare few things I wear which bring Mrs. C closer for a more lingering sniff. The second day I wore Mon Musc A Moi she spent much of the day snuggled close breathing it in with a contented smile. Purely as a Retro Nouveau construct it succeeds at every level. It was high time some of our best perfumers went out and took vanilla back from the perfumed bake shop and reunited it with its passionate partner, musk. M. Ropion has successfully achieved this reunion with style.

Dosclosure: This review was based on a sample provided by Luckyscent.

–Mark Behnke

New Perfume Review A Lab on Fire One Night in Rio- The Party Never Stops

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The greatest cities in the world carry signature smells with them as well. It is interesting to see what a perfume which wants to capture one of those cities chooses as their interpretation. Every once in a while my scent memory of a place and the imagination of a fragrance creative team coincide. The new A Lab on Fire One Night in Rio effectively captures my memory of many nights in Rio de Janiero.

More accurately One Night in Rio captures the smell of the early morning. Something I learned in my time in Rio was the night ends when you say it ends. As long as the party wants to keep going it rolls on. In my late 20’s this was a lifestyle I could get used to. Most nights ended with my group of friends walking home with false dawn on the horizon. The smell of those early mornings was especially sharp as the night blooming flowers overlapped with the blooms of the morning. I am not sure whether perfumer Jean-Marc Chaillan has ever been to Rio but this was one of my favorite natural floral scents. It was a way to signal this particular night was over.

jean-marc chaillan

Jean-Marc Chaillan

Creative director Carlos Kusubayashi has taken some of the most commercial mainstream perfumers and allowed them a bit more latitude than they might get in a more commercial brief. For One Night in Rio M. Chaillan takes that leeway and fills it in with tropical fruit and flowers. It makes for a very sweet composition.

One Night in Rio opens on one of those flowers of the dawn as orange blossom rises up first. M. Chaillan adds a little shade with a judicious pinch of pepper mainly to draw you to the more repressed indoles present in the orange blossom. The heart is where the gardenia of the night and the magnolia of the morning create that shank of the evening accord I was describing above. M. Chaillan lets these two florals intertwine and samba a bit. Passionfruit provides a bit of colorful complement. The final phase is the smell of amber and musk as the exertions of the night come home with a bit of sweaty skin made less skanky with some vanilla.

One Night in Rio has 10-12 hour longevity and average sillage.

I have always found something magical about those hours where the night gives way to the light. I especially enjoy them when I approach them from the nightside. M. Chaillan has produced a fragrance which captures that transition in a place known as Rio.

Disclosure: This review was based on a sample provided by Twisted Lily.

–Mark Behnke