Penhaligon's
A unique visual signature based on accords, character, and seasonality
The cardamom strikes first, green and sharp, before the coffee crashes in like a double espresso shot—dark, bitter, properly roasted. There's an immediate sweetness fighting against that bitterness, the spice already hinting at the incense waiting beneath.
Frankincense unfurls with ceremonial gravity, resinous and slightly smoky, whilst the jasmine blooms into something heady and narcotic against it. The coffee recedes but never fully disappears, leaving ghostly traces of bitterness that prevent the jasmine from becoming cloying, the whole composition now swaying between church and boudoir.
Vanilla-laced oud settles into the skin like amber resin, woody and warm without the barnyard funk. The sweetness intensifies as the spice fades, leaving a golden, slightly powdery trail that clings close—intimate, persistent, still faintly smoky from that frankincense backbone.
The Bewitching Yasmine is a study in contrasts, where Marie Salamagne has orchestrated a collision between the sacred and the profane. That cardamom-spiked coffee opening announces itself with the confidence of someone who's just stepped out of a dimly lit café in Istanbul's backstreets, all bitter roasted beans cut with green, eucalyptus-tinged spice. Yet within minutes, the resinous church-like quality of frankincense begins to thread through, transforming what could have been a gourmand exercise into something far more mystical. The jasmine here isn't the polite, clean variety—it's indolic, almost narcotic, blooming heavily against that incense smoke like white flowers left too long on an altar.
As the oud emerges in the base, it's mercifully restrained, more woody than animalic, allowing the vanilla to soften everything into a golden, ambered glow rather than drowning the composition in typical oud bombast. This is a fragrance for those who find comfort in contradictions: the person who drinks Turkish coffee whilst burning Nag Champa, who wears vintage silk pyjamas to the corner shop. It's intimate rather than projecting, the kind of scent that makes strangers lean closer on the Tube.
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4.0/5 (174)