Showing posts with label blackcurrant. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blackcurrant. Show all posts

Neela Vermeire's Trayee - A whirling dervish of beauty. (perfume review)

Irreverently edited picture of  Sadhu source


For those of you do not know about Neela Vermeire's perfumes, you're in for a treat. Neela is fragrance fan who, in 2012, launched her own house. She contracted none other than Bertrand Duchaufour (seems to be a smart trend among new houses!) to bring to life her idea: Discover Your India. Together, they urge you to sample from India's past through to its future, in the French perfume style. Sample the Vedic period in Trayee, experience the Mogul-British Raj through Mohur, and finally land in Modern India with Bombay Bling. All three scents have been well-received by perfumistas and Noses in the Know alike. Today, we're going to discuss Trayee!

One of the incredibly intelligent things the Neela Vermeire Creations line does (aside from having beautifully-made scents) is offer not only a sample collection, but also a "discovery set" which includes 10ml of each scent (only $118.55). Genius.

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Trayee
The name (pronounced “try-ee”) means “triad”, an allusion to the sacred origin of the first three Vedas, the most ancient sacred texts in India. The notes are drawn from the ingredients used in religious rituals and ayurvedic medicine during the Vedic era. Rich in incense, myrrh and oud, the fragrance is a poignant blend of smoke, spices and resins that harks back to the very origins of perfumery – a burnt offering to the gods and an aid to meditation.
Bertrand Duchaufour has always excelled at bringing transparency to dark resinous notes, and he surpasses himself in the smoky blend: Trayee is amazingly faceted, with green (basil, cardamom, cassis), floral (jasmine), spicy (ginger, cinnamon, clove), leather (saffron, oud), smoky (vetiver, sandalwood) and balsamic (myrrh, vanilla) effects, dominated by the quintessentially Indian fragrances of sandalwood and jasmine. The perfumer has even added an arrestingly realistic ganja accord, a memory of the sadus he ran across during his trips in India.
Trayee’s smoky tendrils may not have consciousness-altering effects, but we suspect that the gorgeous natural materials in the formula might be aromatherapeutic. Beauty heals.  -
Luckscent

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Trayee Notes
Blue ginger, elemi, cinnamon, ganja accord, blackcurrant absolute, basil, jasmine sambac, Egyptian jasmine, cardamom absolute, clove, saffron, Javanese and Haitian vetiver, incense, Mysore sandalwood oil, patchouli, myrrh, vanilla, cedar, amber notes, oud palao from Laos, oak moss.
Special Note: Trayee was nominated for the prestigious Fifi Award! 




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Trayee opens with a strong elemi scent to me. It's a lemon-piney resinous scent that is bright and sparkly - imagine lemongrass furniture polish, but pretty. Elemi is related to frankincense and myrrh. It's not a scent I am used to, and so perhaps that's why it stands out so much, maybe your results are different. The scent of elemi is considered to be balancing, and I think I find that to be true with the opening of Trayee. It's very calming.

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Slowly, the blackcurrant (cassis) peeks out, alongside some green cardamom. And there's a dash of spice and a basil leaf or two. Where did those come from? Maybe my nose simply adjusted to the elemi and they've been there all along?

Like blinking through smoke, or perhaps waking from a dream, one slowly becomes aware of soft, lush floral jasmine, but it's so hard to focus! Is it really there?

If you sniff closely, you get one thing, if you pull back and pay attention to the scent you'll notice that things are different. The heavier aspects (woods, resins, spices, fruits) seem to be weighted to the skin, while the smokier facets lift off and swirl around the wearer. It is here that you'll pick up not only the incense but, if you're lucky, that "ganja accord" which does flash in and out from time to time - and it's spectacular.

The sweetness of vetiver, vanilla, cedar, and oud now push forward a bit, grabbing the scent and pulling it down into a sweeter darkness, which eventually fleshes out and becomes a woody but sweet serenity, laced with smoke. This is definitely a scent that inspires relaxation and comfort. I haven't yet meditated while wearing it, but I suspect it would be perfect.

Trayee twists in the air, like the smoke she's based on (clearly she's a "she" as she's so beautifully volatile - though please men, try her! She's made for men and women!). She's mysterious, like her sibling Mohur, and rather like a multi-faceted gemstone shows various flashes of light, darkness, and color depending on how you hold her. Each time you pick these two scents up and wear them, you will surely get a different experience. Trayee is sometimes spicier on me. Every now an again she's all about the jasmine. Some days she wants to be a bit oud-ier, going nearly straight from the elemi into the oud with hardly a backwards glance at her own heart. Other times she is truly a full-fledged journey through all of these notes. Just like finding my center and staying focused while meditating, Trayee is hard to pin down to just one thing.

I'll be honest with you: all three of the scents in the Neela Vermeire Creations line were challenging to get to know. This one was my first favorite, and yet it was still quite tricky for me. In the end, like many things challenging, this challenge ultimately makes these scents all the more special. If you, like me, find these hard to understand, please persevere! I promise you, in the end you will fall in love with them.





Buy Trayee and the other 

Neela Vermeire Creations through

 the NVC websiteLuckyscent
and through the retailers listed here.


Did you see that bottle?! 




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samples were a gift

Wandering through an Enchanted Forest... and a lot of marketing.

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Enchanted Forest by The Vagabond Prince

I probably shouldn't even be writing this review yet, but I'm going to. I'm ornery like that.

You see, I haven't quite made up my mind about this Enchanted Forest. I seem to be one of the few who hasn't. It's getting crazy raves throughout Perfumeland. Leave it to me to be the one who doesn't fall in line.

In case you haven't heard about this perfume, here's the super-duper quick rundown. Enchanted Forest is the first scent in a line called The Vagabond Prince, created by Fragrantica founders Zoran Knezevic and Elena Knezhevich. The perfume itself was masterfully blended by Perfumeland's perfuming sweetheart Bertrand Duchaufour, who has been quoted a bazillion times about this scent. In fact, there's such a flurry of quotations dropping from the sky down into reviews and discussions about Enchanted Forest, I sometimes wonder how many people have actually smelled the stuff!

About Enchanted Forest, the phenomenon
There is so much copy associated with this product, one gets weary sorting through it. Here's the website, in case you haven't seen it: http://www.vagabondprince.com/.

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A summary, with much missing: Zoran and Elena, if I might be so familiar as to use their first names, wished to start a perfume house. They wanted the best of everything. They decided to work with Bertrand Duchaufour. They asked him to create, as their first perfume, a scent reminiscent of their home, Russia. They like blackcurrant and fir. Duchaufour likes blackcurrant and fir. Voila! Or something like that.

Add in references to a pagan festival ("Kupala—a Slavic tradition that continues, more festive than other things at present, as a kind of homage to nature and the mysteries of the forest."), a little bit of magic ("After the exciting hide and seek game, the fairy will comfortably cuddle in your mind and on your skin."), a stretch of the imagination ("It's the smell of the forest, when you step in it in the night."), a bit of exclusivity to tempt those who like that kind of thing ("It is the only perfume I know of that is built around blackcurrant as the sole raw material"), a splash of factual sounding info ("The blackcurrant is the MOST IMPORTANT fruity note of the range that exists in perfumery." - emphasis not mine), a little fear ("I wanted to work the dark, mysterious, almost scary effects of the forest, all that evokes mysterie [sic] and, to man, seems almost supernatural in the forest: animals whose existence have been forgotten...") and you have not only a whole lot of marketing but also a lot of big expectations.

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And that's just about the perfume. We haven't even started learning about the bottle and packaging, designed by Elena Knezhevich herself! Let's see, it's round, glossy, and black and meant to "resemble the blackcurrant berry" that is so prominently featured in the perfume. The bottle has a distinct retro-Russian feel thanks to the "golden pattern of Hohloma grass wrapped around the bottle. It was designed exclusively for this fragrance by the artist, first painted by hand and then printed on the bottle in shiny gold." Further reading educates us that Hohloma is an ornate Russian painting tradition and that the style employed on the bottle is specifically "the festive 'Kudrina' which Hohloma artists used only for gifts on special occasions". (read more about the beautiful bottle here)  Luckily, there's also a lot of symbolism to further enhance the marketing: within the decorations on the bottle you will find "two symbols—a sleeping dove (silence) and the moon (fairytales, the mystery of the night)—are included in its tendrils. A remarkable thing about Hohloma is that it is not painted—it grows under the brush from a magical seed which is hidden somewhere in its pattern."

For a lovely video review of the bottle and packaging, please visit my friend Dan, aka MyMickers on YouTube:





 About Enchanted Forest, the perfume

But back to the juice... According to Duchaufour, Enchanted Forest is a modern soliflore. In the copy I have seen, he goes on to explain that there are two focuses: blackcurrant and fir. Well, color me puzzled, as I thought "soliflore" meant "one flower". Oh well. So many things about perfumery mystify me.
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Top notes: pink pepper, aldehydes, sweet orange (traces), flower cassis, blackcurrant leaf, hawthorn, effects of rum and wine, rosemary, davana.

Heart notes: blackcurrant buds absolute (by LMR from Grasse), CO2 blackcurrant (by Floral Concept from Grasse), Russian coriander seed, honeysuckle, rose, carnation, vetiver
Base notes: opoponax resinoid, Siam benzoin, amber, oakmoss, fir balsam absolute, Patchouli Purecoeur®, castoreum absolute, cedar notes, vanilla, musk


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An enchanted forest. 
But not this one.


My review...

Take a look at the picture above. That's what I picture when I hear "Enchanted Forest". Dappled light deliciously contrasted with a little spooky shadowing; a magical pathway one dare not leave; some pretty, flickering, mystical light; maybe a fae creature or two; perhaps some oversized, technicolor mushrooms à la Alice in Wonderland.

If you asked me to downsize my expectations, I think I'd probably back into something green and loamy, a bit gritty, full of mulch and dirt and dark green leaves.

When I apply The Vagabond Prince's Enchanted Forest, that's not what I get. Were I to be blindfolded and presented this scent, it would seem a lot like this:
Sitting on the chair, I wait for my first sniff. Suddenly, I am pelted in the face with juicy berries of some kind, and maybe some pears. And there's something a bit... off. Maybe rank. I can't think with all this fruit landing on my person. 
The onslaught continues for several hours before I am allowed to remove my blindfold and realize I'm sitting in front of a sweaty guy in a tank top who has finally stopped throwing fruit at me and is now presenting me with one-third of a serving of a delicious berry cobbler with a teaspoon of vanilla icecream on top. 

Yeah. It's a lot like that.

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Forest Fairy.
Not present in this perfume.
Duchaufour has successfully created a very berry-heavy scent. In fact, most of the development of Enchanted Forest is blackcurrant. Or, rather:

BLACKCURRANT!!!!!!!!


A whole-freakin'-lot of blackcurrant. At least, I assume it's blackcurrant. To be honest, I do not know what that berry smells like. To my nose, this is a berry-pear-B.O. blend. That's right, I said "B.O.", as in body odor. Some say blackcurrant has a cat urine scent, but I'm here to tell you that at least in this scent it's B.O. and not cat pee. I spent 10 years working in the veterinary industry and have lived with cats most of my life. I have scooped a ton of pee-soaked litter and this is not what it smells like. Dial down the ammonia expectations and twist the sulfuric, sweaty knob towards Max and you've got the weird facet of blackcurrant that many people pick up.

Before you assume that I am insulting Enchanted Forest with this B.O. descriptor, please relax! It's similar to the body odor description that often arises in grapefruit-heavy perfumes. It doesn't mean the scent is unwearable! No, indeed. Perfumistas are made of hearty stock and it takes more than a little sweat to scare us away!

I have searched this scent high and low for the fabled fir note, and I think I have finally pinpointed it. Honestly, it's more like a two-sided coin than a single note that can be teased out of the perfume. One side of the coin is the face of blackcurrant, the other side is a green fir. If you're looking for a distinct pine tree smell you're not going to find it. This fir absolute blends beautifully with what I must assume are the natural green and woody aspects of blackcurrant (a fact Duchaufour alludes to somewhere in the pages of text written about the perfume). Yes, it's there, this mystical fir, but it's not slapping you across the face like the blackcurrant. It's much more subtle than that, at least on my skin.  (A special thank you to Mandy Aftel for at one point sending me a sample of fir absolute which I pulled out to assist me in finding the note in this perfume!)

The drydown of Enchanted Forest is an anemic vanilla-tinged berry musk that, while pretty, does little to support the incredibly intense top- and heart-notes. It's beautiful, don't get me wrong, but there just isn't enough oomph  after all the pomp and circumstance of pounds of tossed fruit and a whiff of B.O.

My review and opinions were formed after dabbing from a sample vial. Is it wrong that I hold out hope that this scent presents differently when sprayed and that I get all of the promised magic? ;)




Final words...

If it sounds like I don't like Enchanted Forest, then I apologize. I actually quite like it, lopsided as it may be. It's just that... well, after reading tons of reviews chockful of ecstatic raves and blissful hyperbole, I guess I just expected that dream forest. I didn't expect a berry fest with a dollop of vanilla musk. It's quite a pretty perfume in a gorgeous bottle, this Enchanted Forest, and I may even partake in a split or even fork out for the bottle. But when paired with pages and pages of overblown text and an constantly building sense of anticipation, I simply found it lacking. It's a good perfume. It's probably not great. I think if I had been expecting a beautiful berry perfume, I'd like it quite a bit more... I think possibly this scent has been oversold, over-promised and, sadly, slightly under-delivered.

As always, feel free to disagree with me in the comments!

You can purchase Enchanted Forest for $180 via...