While I do get a certain subtle freshness at the opening of the fragrance, which I would attribute to the lavender, tangerine, and bergamot, none of them is especially strong or even obvious, and I would not have known they were present had I not considered the note list in some detail. It’s here also that you can smell a light creaminess, likely derived from the sandalwood accord (many of which contain the compound methyl laitone, which is strongly reminiscent of coconut milk). It might be hard to separate from the vanilla at times, but becomes more obvious as some of the spice begins to fade. While I would not describe Ravageur as a clove fragrance in any way, the note does tame some of the sharp spiciness of the cinnamon, helping to maintain the woody character that so well balances the vanilla.Ĭoumarin/tonka bean, which I can only describe as the smell of snickerdoodles, slowly makes itself known. The woodiness serves to temper and transform the sweet darkness of the vanilla, giving it a stylish, modern twist that’s hard not to admire.Īs the perfume begins to develop, the cinnamon steps back a bit and allows the weirdly numb, novocaine-like spiciness of clove to emerge from hiding. This is not cinnamon oil as I have smelled it Roucel definitely adulterated the raw material in such a way as to make it smell much more like burying your face in several hundred pounds of cinnamon sticks. Wrapped around this gourmand opening is a dry, woody, almost musty note that I originally thought was hay absolute, but turned out to be cinnamon bark. It opens with a massive dose of leathery vanilla, which I suspect may be comprised in at least some small part of real vanilla absolute. Less a perfume than the olfactory equivalent of “come hither” look, Musc Ravageur may well be one of the most enticing, alluring fragrances ever composed. There are in fact, several perfumes from the late twentieth century that COULD be thought to smell that way, perhaps most famously YSL’s Kouros (1981) and Serge Lutens’ Muscs Koublai Khan (1998).īut Musc Ravageur is a different kind of animal. With a name like “ Musc Ravageur” (“Devastating Musk”), you would think that Maurice Roucel’s first contribution to Frederic Malle’s Editions de Parfums line would be a huge, animalic, oppressive musk bomb, like the smell of dirty jock shorts and swamp ass.
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