Grimoire Anatole Lebreton 2016

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7.9 / 10 108 Ratings

A popular perfume by Anatole Lebreton for women and men, released in 2016. The scent is spicy-green. It is still in production.
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Main accords

Spicy

Green

Earthy

Smoky

Resinous

Fragrance Pyramid

Top Notes

Basil

Bergamot

True lavender

Heart Notes

Frankincense

Atlas cedar

Elemi resin

Seville lavender

Base Notes

Cumin

Moss

Patchouli

Musk

Perfumer

Anatole Lebreton

Ratings

Scent

7.9108 Ratings

Longevity

8.085 Ratings

Sillage

7.586 Ratings

Bottle

7.276 Ratings

Value for money

7.232 Ratings

Submitted by Michael, last update on 06/25/2025.

Smells similar

What the fragrance is similar to

Nota Bene

Blask

46°N 08°E

№ 02 - L'Air du Désert Marocain Eau de Toilette Intense

Reviews

8 in-depth fragrance descriptions

07/23/2019

8
Bottle 9
Sillage 10
Longevity 9.5
Scent

Aldest
2 Reviews

Aldest

Helpful Review 7

Grimoire - the mysterious old book ...

It is not just a scent.
Grimoire tells you stories ...

Very spiritual incense and yet human (beware: almost body/animal odors).

You leaf through an old spell book with fever, in a Benedictine monastery, near the garden.

You ARE a cathedral.

It is a very clever, rich and uncommon perfume - like all Anatole Lebreton's.
Some notes of Grimoire reminds me of my so beloved Ebène (Balmain).
Also a little like Irié "Nota Bene", but more interesting.
(very good performance on me)

06/25/2025

ClaireV
958 Reviews

ClaireV

Helpful Review 2

Under its spell

I respect and admire Anatole Lebreton's work, but Grimoire in particular stands out at being special. Not everyone will like it, and I think it's fair to say that the perfume has a cool, remote air that means it must select you, not the other way around. Setting out to smell like the thick dust that rises off a book of spells (a grimoire, in French) when closed shut, it combines a set of ashy resin notes with the earthy red-brown dampness of cumin.

It's a riff on the idea of Gris Clair but better, more successful because the dust tamps down the screech of lavender and makes it feel genuinely restful. It's also monastically, ascetically dry. But the scent manages to capture dryness without filling the scent with the usual nose-scrapingly dry aromachemicals, for which I'm genuinely grateful.

As a side-note, I've smelled a couple of perfumes that seek to recreate the feeling or smell of dry, hot dust from a desert. L'Air du Desert Marocain, of course, was the trail blazer in this area, but it's been followed by two equally costly niche fragrances, namely, Sheiduna by Puredistance and Taklamakan by SHL 777. These two perfumes demonstrate the risk and rewards associated with using the new generation of potently dry, woody-ambery aromachemicals: Sheiduna fails miserably, becoming a white, massively radiant ball of pain to those sensitive to scratchy aromachemicals, and Taklamakan succeeds, emitting a low pulse of warm, ambery 'sand' and dry patchouli aromas that smell toasted, dry, and yet comfortable to wear and to smell.

In Grimoire, the dryness feels cool and almost ashy. It gains an element of warmth, however, from the rather generous dose of cumin featured in this scent. The cumin adds a nice human touch to the cool dustiness of the lavender and incense, like the sweet, damp, oniony sweat under the arms of an ancient gardener tending a Mediterranean herb garden. The aromatic, simmering heat of the spice and the elemi makes the base of the scent feel hot to the touch, a nice contrast to the cool dryness of the top half. Grimoire is surprisingly easy to wear, and has a natural elegance to it that doesn't labor any particular point. Have you ever seen the photos of the Italian men coming and going from the Pitti men's fashion shows in September? This scent is the living embodiment of that.

04/02/2019

5
Bottle 7
Sillage 10
Longevity 10
Scent

Greenfaerie
86 Reviews

Greenfaerie

Helpful Review 2

The tree I always wanted

I’ve read reviews all over the net, and I can’t really relate to any of them. To me this smells just like a tree. That’s it. A gigantic, thick-trunked, sprawling, thriving, ancient tree. Not the whole forest and certainly not a castle. Not a library, not like paper. It’s like the most perfect log scent, the one I’ve been searching for for years. I had to purchase immediately upon first sniff of my sample.

Now that I can spritz from a full bottle and really analyze it, I do notice it smells animalic as soon as it hits my skin, a lot like synthetic civet. It’s there yet at the same time it’s subtle. I notice a strong scent of toasted cumin. I cook Indian sometimes, and this smells like the cumin seeds hit the hot pan and begins to brown, not when I sniff them fresh in the jar. The nuances of the cumin add to the bark or log scent that I’m so crazy about. It actually reminds me very much of LADDM, but it lacks the citrus and is a bit sweeter and stickier, like benzoin. The base is fairly creamy, again like benzoin or possibly a touch of vanilla, but somehow it does not detract from the overall tree scent.

Regardless of the nuances, it all adds up to a really fragrant tree trunk or cut log. I need a backup bottle!

03/22/2021

Art
68 Reviews

Art

3

Incense and woods

Imagine yourself in a wooden hut somewhere in a forest thicket. It is dark in the small room, there are a bunches of herbs, roots and spruce branches everywhere, fresh cut firewood crackles in the stove and everything around is covered with cold gray smoke. It all smells of camphor, wood, fir needles and incense. A very atmospheric perfume!

09/06/2022

Mlleghoul
451 Reviews

Mlleghoul

3

alchemical reverie

Grimoire from Anatole LeBreton features a lemony-balsamic sweetness suggestive of curative sweets and a cryptic dustiness evocative of brittle parchment and rare texts, all encircled with a pungent fog of bitter, caramelized cumin and decomposing mosses and herbs. This scent conjures imagery from a 17th-century oil painting steeped in alchemical knowledge and symbolism and ancient traditions mingling science, philosophy, faith, and artistic spirit:
“A shadowy scenario unfolds as a lone wax candle burns deep into the night. Various lenses and prisms refract the faint glow of the flickering flame to vaguely illuminate a crude, darkened laboratory, whereupon an oaken table, dusty flasks precariously balanced, bubble with a disquieting phosphorescence and engines of distillation chug and clank murkily nearby. Brittle scrolls and yellowed manuscripts, embellished with colorful emblems and arcane symbols scribbled hastily in the margins, are scattered haphazardly on a dirt floor to further illustrate this scene of curious chemical phenomena and scholarly chaos. A wan, stocking-footed man with a funny cap alternately pores pensively over massive tomes or perhaps pumps a small bellow to encourage a sullen, smoking fire, while lost in analytical reverie.” Yes, this is what Grimoire smells like. Yes, I did just quote a passage from The Art of the Occult, a book that I wrote. Is that tacky to mention? Maybe. Is it relevant? Entirely!

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