Amouage
A unique visual signature based on accords, character, and seasonality
Aniseed hits like a shock of cold metal against smoke—sharp, medicinal, almost mentholated—before frankincense oil billows up in great resinous clouds. The cardamom and elemi create a green-spicy brightness that feels oddly liturgical, whilst bergamot struggles valiantly to provide citrus relief before being smothered by the advancing smoke.
Tobacco absolute finally emerges, but it's steeped in liquorice root and fenugreek, creating an almost savoury, curry-like bitterness that's utterly unexpected. Orange blossom and osmanthus provide fleeting moments of apricot-skin sweetness, whilst the lavender adds an aromatic, fougère-like quality that feels wonderfully anachronistic against the birch tar's leathery creosote.
The base settles into a dense, tarry amalgam where myrrh, labdanum, and Assam oud form a trinity of funky, animalic resin. Bourbon vanilla and tonka bean don't sweeten so much as add a woody-balsamic roundness, whilst vetiver and gaiac wood provide a smoky, slightly antiseptic finish that lingers for hours like incense ash on skin.
Cécile Zarokian has conjured something magnificently brooding here—a tobacco scent that feels less like a gentleman's study and more like an ancient incense ceremony conducted in a rain-soaked cedar forest. The tobacco absolute sits at the heart, but it's been thoroughly infiltrated by frankincense oil and elemi resin from the very start, creating a smoke-wreathed hybrid that reads simultaneously sacred and deeply earthy. Aniseed and liquorice root form an unexpected sweet-medicinal thread that winds through the composition like a red cord through darkness, preventing the smoke from becoming austere. The spice work is deft—cardamom and fenugreek bring a curry-leaf bitterness that makes the tobacco feel less Virginia and more like walking through a spice souk with a cigar smouldering in hand. This is emphatically not a clean tobacco; the birch tar and labdanum ensure a tarry, almost leathery quality, whilst the Assam oud adds a funky, fermented edge that some will find confronting and others will find addictive. Orange blossom and osmanthus absolute provide brief, apricot-tinged respites from the resinous onslaught, but they're quickly swallowed by the myrrh and benzoin in the base. The vanilla here isn't sweet so much as resinous-woody, thanks to the tonka and Peru balsam coalition. This is for the fragrance obsessive who's grown weary of polite interpretations, who wants their tobacco beaten with frankincense and dragged through an apothecary at midnight. Uncompromisingly dense, unapologetically intense.
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4.1/5 (193)