As much as I enjoy complex developing perfumes. There is space in my heart to enjoy a simple accord. There are a lot of fragrances that aspire to be this kind of perfume but most of them manage to find the banality of this style. When it works it is because the accord is built to illuminate something that is not so obvious. Which is what I found with Salvatore Ferragame Savane di Seta.
Emilie Coppermann
One of the things I wonder about is on a simple perfume like this how can there be two perfumers. In this case they are Emilie Coppermann and Alienor Massenet. Purely as conjecture I suspect you might need to have a sounding board to find the balance you are looking for. A single accord is going to be most prone to falling apart due to one of the few ingredients overcompensating. I do know whatever the creative relationship between the two women, they did it right.
Alienor Massenet
The soliflore accord in this case is iris. I’ve written a lot of words about rooty and powdery. One adjective I don’t use a lot in reference to it is sweet. It is because the kind of sweet comes from an unusual place. It is the sweet of the earth or the yeastiness of rising dough. It gets lost in the more prominent faces of iris. Here with the smart use of two ingredients that sweet is given some space to fill.
The way it is achieved to start is with a hefty dose of carrot seed. If you’ve ever peeled carrots, there is a vegetal sweetness. Carrot seed gives a concentrated amount of that. It is an ingredient that gets used a lot because of its unique scent profile. Here the perfumers use it because they want it to find that sweet earthiness of the iris. They do it so well that it felt as if the iris was rising through the carrot seed. As the iris becomes more prominent the powdery nature does also. The final ingredient is sandalwood. This is that sweet creamy woody version. Here it finds that doughy center of iris and allows it to rise. As the three ingredients come into alignment it forms a gorgeous soliflore iris accord.
Savane di Seta has 10-12 hour longevity and average sillage.
When a fragrance gets this style right it is like seeing an ingredient anew. In this case the perfumers introduced me to the sweet science of iris.
Disclosure: This review is based on a sample supplied by Nordstrom.
–Mark Behnke
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