What We Do Is Secret / A Lab on Fire
What We Do Is Secret / A Lab on Fire
146 votes
A unique visual signature based on accords, character, and seasonality
Lychee and honey collide with bergamot brightness in the first moments, creating a fruity-floral burst that's immediately warm and slightly sticky-sweet. The citrus prevents the honey from becoming cloying, instead establishing a gauzy, luminous quality against your skin.
The composition settles into its true character as heliotrope and Turkish rose emerge, softening the initial fruitiness into a powdery, almond-tinged florality. Vanilla slides in beneath, amplifying the gourmand sweetness with a creamy, almost dessert-like richness that feels indulgent but never heavy.
Tolu balm and tonka bean create a dense, almost resinous base where ambergris adds subtle animalic warmth, whilst sandalwood provides skeletal structure—the sweetness persists but shifts toward something more abstract and skin-like, the fragrance becoming deeply intimate and personal as it fades.
What We Do In Paris Is Secret announces itself as a confection that doesn't apologise for its sweetness, yet Dominique Ropion has threaded something genuinely sophisticated through its gourmand core. The opening marriage of lychee and honey creates an almost candied luminosity—there's a waxy quality to how these notes interact, like rose-tinted hard sweets catching light. But this isn't mere dessert; the bergamot provides a whisper of citrus acidity that prevents the composition from cloying into saccharine territory, grounding the composition just enough to make you lean in rather than recoil.
The heliotrope and Turkish rose heart is where the fragrance reveals its true character. Rather than competing with the sweetness, these florals amplify the gourmand's powdery dimension—think of almond blossom dust mingling with honeyed petals, the rose arriving not as a classical beauty but as a creamy, slightly hedonistic presence. The vanilla entry here is crucial: it's not the austere Madagascar sort, but something richer, almost custard-like, that bridges the fruity opening with what's to come.
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3.8/5 (74)