Perfume journalist Ksenia Golovanova tells what scents to look for if you follow perfume trends.
RUB 9750
Flowerhead, Byredo
Every spring, perfumer Jérôme Epinette creates something beautiful for the Swedish brand Byredo. In 2014, it was Flowerhead, an Indian wedding garland of jasmine and tuberose. Cranberries and lemons were the first to be strung on this elegant thread: Flowerhead's beginning is sour and tart, like the first sip of mango lassi or the smell of sticky greens in the spring.
RUB 9920
Tuberosa, Santa Maria Novella
“The house smelled damp and sweet, like the ghosts of a long-dead cookie dwelled in it,” writes Neil Gaiman in American Gods. So - Provencal navette, creamy biscuits with the scent of orange blossoms - and Tuberosa, which has been generously poured with milk with orange blossom.
RUB 17,500
Tubéreuse Criminelle, Serge Lutens
One of the most famous tuberoses came out in 1999, when this flower was still considered a perfumery exotic: the general public knew it from Poison from Dior and Amarige from Guvenchy, and “niche” people mostly from Fracas, Robert Piguet. The violent mint-camphor overture of the initial notes - green and icy - makes this tuberose "criminal" in the eyes of an unprepared person. But those who have sat down to the main action will receive everything from perfumer Christopher Sheldrake: coconut cream, flower wax and even a metallic touch of blood.
RUB 7,700
Nuit de Tubéreuse, L'Artisan Parfumeur
"Night" is an interesting interpretation of the tuberose note. If Santa Maria Novella emphasizes the white-flowered femininity of tuberose with the help of orange blossom, and Christopher Sheldrake works with the contrast of its acrid green and creamy notes, then perfumer Bertrand Duchaufour does this - he takes out pale roots from the ground, shakes them slightly from the soil and brings them together with his trademark incense and green, sulphurous unripe mango accord. A branch of this tuberose was put on a Buddhist altar in Thailand: fragrant smoke is pouring out of the brazier and right there, near the temple, street vendors sell cut fruit.
RUB 21,000
Tuberose Le Soir, Aerin
Aerin's portfolio has been replenished with a couple of fragrances - Tuberose Le Jour and Tuberose Le Soir ("daytime" and "evening" tuberose, respectively). Neither one nor the other is like anything the brand has previously produced, which has crammed its hand in clean, perfectly tailored fragrances for women in beige cashmere coats. "Daytime", despite the declared time of day, is quite a diva, and "Vechernyaya" is a vamp at all: it smells of ripe tuberose and musk half and half with salt from perspiration on the skin, alive, human, night.
RUB 21,000
Sole, Moresque
The Italian Moresque brand is a curious bridge between European and Arab perfumery. From the first, he mainly got the naming ("Countess", "Aristocrats", "Queen" - here are a few names of fragrances) and golden mountains of citrus fruits, from the second - well-recognizable oriental motifs: in the collection you will find both saffron oud with a rose, and dense like arabic abaya, musks, and sun-drenched fruits. Sole also belongs to the latter type, whose name, by the way, is translated as “Sun”. What it illuminates: Tuberose fields, orderly rows of peach trees, coconut plantations and lemon groves.
RUB 10,900
Nuit de Bakelite, Naomi Goodsir
One might think that the new scent of the brand has successfully fit into the tuberose trend, but this is not entirely true: work on "Night" began several years ago, when the perfumery world was not yet shaking from the white-flower fever. But even then, designer and artist Naomi Goodseer wanted a special tuberose - “a flower in a leather cage,” as the author of Nuit de Bakelite Isabelle Doyenne put it. In addition to leather and greenery - green resin, stem juice, water in which flowers stood - Doyenne sewed into Nuit a smoky accord familiar to fans of Naomi Goodsir: she also smoked Bois d'Ascese, Cuir Velours and Iris Cendre.
RUB 12,950
Zephiro, Onyrico
The Italian brand Onyrico makes, as journalists like to say, "a healthy person's perfume": it is certainly a niche (even in terms of the number of places where it is sold - there are not many of them), but the niche is elegant, without a frenzied arthouse and shocking plot twists. Take, for example, their Zephiro: this is exactly what you expect from tuberose, if you love it with all your black soul - flesh, debauchery and overripe fruits, as in Botticelli's paintings.
Voyance, Baruti
Great news: the founder of the independent Dutch brand Baruti, perfumer Spyros Drosopoulos, has finally found a Russian distributor - the brand has been on sale for four years now, but it has not been sold in Russia before. Perhaps the most famous Baruti scent is the spicy and milky Chai, the most unusual is Voyance, a fire made high in the mountains. The illusion of presence is almost perfect: fragrant wood smoke pours down (this is how vetiver and guaiac wood are "smoked"), mountain air rings with crystal aldehydes, from somewhere in the valley the aroma of flowers - Indian tuberoses - rises.
RUB 1,500
Elvira's Vamp, Demeter Fragrance Library
The mini-collection Elvira Mistress of the Dark Collection was released by the American brand Demeter four years ago - for Halloween. It is dedicated, as the name suggests, to the old comedy "Elvira - Lady of Darkness", a brilliant statement on the topic of human hypocrisy, hidden behind a funny mystical plot. The scent Elvira’s Vamp is not for perfume hypocrites: the tuberose in it is arrogant, the gardenia is self-confident, and the fragrant tobacco practically hits the nose with a fist.
RUB 9500
Narcotic V., Nasomatto
If Narcotic V. were a musical group, The Supremes would be: the main one - Diana Ross - would be tuberose, and the other soloists would be lily and jasmine. The last two are chilled in the shadow of a brilliant disco diva, but they also got into the Flower Fragrance Hall of Fame exclusively thanks to her - spicy, indole, slightly milky.
RUB 7,500
Vierges et Toreros, Etat Libre d'Orange
"Virgins and Bullfighters" is one of the most underestimated tuberoses, about which even now, when everyone is raving about white flowers, no one really remembers. The brand positions the fragrance as masculine, but the perfumer is more concerned with the war of the sexes: for virgins there are fresh, greenish tuberoses, for bullfighters - oily skin (saddle, bootleg) and a costus that resembles the smell of not too fresh hair. The male wins in the end: the flowers are trampled into the sand, smells of the sun and a little blood.
195
Labradorite # 13, Olivier Durbano
Olivier Durbano is a perfumer who works within the framework of a rigid concept: all his fragrances are dedicated to precious and ornamental stones. The Inuit believed that labradorite, a stone with a bluish-golden glow, came from the northern lights - a heavenly fire trapped in permafrost. But despite this, Labradorite smells of something very warm and lively: the heat of a fire, reindeer musk, strange white flowers in the bosom.
