Goutal
A unique visual signature based on accords, character, and seasonality
Angelica root comes out swinging, all herbaceous bitterness and green aromatics that make your nose sit up and pay attention. It's almost soapy in its cleanness, a shock of celery-seed brightness that completely rewrites your expectations of what a vanilla fragrance should announce. The vanilla is already there, but it's being held at arm's length by that angular, almost medicinal green note.
The almond milk emerges like a mediator, its nutty creaminess softening the edges without erasing them entirely. This is where the composition finds its balance—the vanilla finally gets room to breathe, but it's a woody, resinous vanilla rather than a dessert one. The benzoin starts adding its balsamic weight, creating that characteristic powdery effect that sits somewhere between makeup compact and church incense.
Guaiac wood and benzoin dominate, creating a skin-close aura of smoky sweetness that's more about warmth than projection. The vanilla persists as a soft murmur rather than a shout, its sweetness tempered by that distinctive woody-rubbery quality of guaiac. What remains is comforting but cerebral, sweet but not innocent—a fragrance that's made peace with itself and settled into something quietly compelling.
Isabelle Doyen's Vanille Exquise is vanilla stripped of its safety net—no caramel cushion, no crowd-pleasing musk, just the botanical truth of Polynesian vanilla absolute meeting the aromatic severity of angelica root. The opening salvo is unexpectedly medicinal, that green, almost celery-like bitterness of angelica carving straight through what could have been cloying sweetness. It's a clever bit of perfumery sleight-of-hand: the angelica acts as a palate cleanser for your nose, letting you actually smell the vanilla rather than just registering "sweet".
The almond milk at the heart is where Doyen's skill truly shows—it's not marzipan, not amaretto, but something milkier and more vegetal, like the first press of blanched almonds before sugar enters the equation. This bridges the angular opening and the resinous base, creating a gourmand composition that refuses to pander. The guaiac wood and benzoin create a smoky, slightly rubbery warmth underneath, the kind of woody accord that smells more like pencil shavings than sandalwood.
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3.9/5 (89)