En Passant is a move in chess where you can take an opponent's pawn by moving your pawn past it. It's a situational move that is also quite quirky and relatively low-stakes, and honestly I don't know how often it happens in high level chess. But in my experience it's quite flashy and you have to either trick your opponent into letting you get one, or it comes up randomly when an overzealous opponent isn't paying enough attention to the board.
En Passant, the fragrance, feels so beautifully matched to this because it too is flashy - that note pyramid screams 'inventive niche freshie' - but is also gorgeous and elegant. It feels genuinely starchy and tangible with a wheat note that is possible to identify even without much fragrance knowledge, and the cucumber and lilac make a gorgeous floral-fruity pairing that feels rainy, lush, aquatic, but not thin. The detail and precision push this well past 'this smells like a soap' territory. Or maybe it does smell like soap, but one of the most expensive soaps you've ever smelled. As it dries down, a plush but beautifully balanced musk begins to make this a gorgeous second-skin type fragrance. This is one of those transformative and beautiful developments that so many fresh fragrances seem to lack. To me, this is one of those perfumes that really showcased Frederic Malle at the height of its powers.
My love for this fragrance is unabashed and it is one of the fragrances my fiancee most adores. It glimmers like dew in the heat and offers a pond-like zen in the cold. Step too close and you'll be taken - what a move.
