ésika
A unique visual signature based on accords, character, and seasonality
Bergamot's clean snap emerges first, bright and almost astringent, before honeysuckle's creamy sweetness immediately softens the attack into something almost cloying. Within minutes, you're caught between these two impulses—freshness and indulgence in uneasy cohabitation.
Black rose and hibiscus create a subtle, slightly tart floral conversation, whilst the heliotrope base creeps upwards, introducing powdery almond tones that make the whole composition feel warm and slightly dusty. The animalic undertones become more apparent now, adding an almost soapy, secondhand quality that transforms the sweetness into something more complex and slightly unsettling.
Heliotrope dominates completely, its creamy, almond character merging with sandalwood's soft wood and musk's skin-like warmth, whilst that lingering animality ensures the sweetness never becomes tender or comforting. What remains is a subtle, slightly powdery skin scent with a faint, indefinable edge.
Altheus unfolds as a strange, intoxicating study in floral contradiction—honeyed sweetness colliding with something darker and more animalic. Nathalie Lorson has constructed a scent that feels deliberately off-kilter, the sort of fragrance that makes you question your own taste rather than reassure it. The Sicilian bergamot arrives with citric brightness, but it's immediately enveloped by honeysuckle's creamy, almost indolic sweetness, creating an opening that sits somewhere between a spring garden and a perfumer's raw material jar.
The heart is where things become genuinely compelling. Black rose (that peculiar, slightly tobacco-tinged floral) wrestles with hibiscus's tart, slightly metallic edge, whilst jasmine adds a creamy, almost soapy weight. There's genuine tension here—the hibiscus wants to be tart and refined; the jasmine wants to be sensual and enveloping. They never quite resolve into harmony, which is precisely what makes Altheus fascinating. The 88% sweetness accord manifests not as vanilla comfort but as heliotrope's powdery, almond-tinged warmth rising from the base, adding a faintly narcotic quality.
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3.7/5 (97)