Top Notes 
Heart Notes 
Base Notes 
09/17/2023
loewenherz
56 Reviews
Translated
Show original
loewenherz
Top Review
44
The fleeting shadow of an imagined memory of a tenderness that never happened
Jean-Claude Ellena is one of the great and relevant perfumers of our time. To put it kindly and appreciatively - and I try to be kind and appreciative whenever I can - his fragrances are unagitated, classic and elegant. To put it less kindly, some may find them somewhat predictable, conservative and uninteresting. That is up to the nose of the observer, their taste and age.
In contrast, Editions de Parfums Frédéric Malle can be seen as something like the Arthaus Kino among perfume manufacturers: a label that presents perfumers like directors as artists and stages its products accordingly. This setting goes hand in hand with a claim and a self-image that wants to be understood as a kind of antithesis to the broad fragrance, to zeitgeisty arbitrariness and overly ingratiating approachability.
With these two thoughts in mind, which I am no longer capable of having after a few years of dealing with perfume, I approached Ellena's Heaven Can Wait. It requires a certain amount of preoccupation, but I had expected that. It is not arbitrary and approachable. Nor is he boring and uninteresting. He's all Malle and Ellena and yet he's different than I thought. No better and no worse. Different.
Clove is mentioned first among its ingredients, and clove is also there initially. And yet this is primarily an iridescent scent, pale powdery, dry, whitish gray. The clove adds a dusty warmth that remains distant, disembodied, and is followed by a broken sweetness. At no point in its existence is this fragrance - and this is very Ellena - stronger than medium strength at most and yet present, challenging for the nose, downright difficult from time to time.
Heaven Can Wait commands and offers seriousness, remembrance, perhaps quiet regret. It is a fragrance like a chance walk along a street where we once thought we loved someone. Like a forgotten and rediscovered item of clothing from a person we should have caressed much more often than we did. Like tender words practiced a hundred times that we never dared to say. And like a long-awaited kiss that never happened.
Conclusion: all Ellena and then again not. Only his name, which I don't understand as I experience it.
In contrast, Editions de Parfums Frédéric Malle can be seen as something like the Arthaus Kino among perfume manufacturers: a label that presents perfumers like directors as artists and stages its products accordingly. This setting goes hand in hand with a claim and a self-image that wants to be understood as a kind of antithesis to the broad fragrance, to zeitgeisty arbitrariness and overly ingratiating approachability.
With these two thoughts in mind, which I am no longer capable of having after a few years of dealing with perfume, I approached Ellena's Heaven Can Wait. It requires a certain amount of preoccupation, but I had expected that. It is not arbitrary and approachable. Nor is he boring and uninteresting. He's all Malle and Ellena and yet he's different than I thought. No better and no worse. Different.
Clove is mentioned first among its ingredients, and clove is also there initially. And yet this is primarily an iridescent scent, pale powdery, dry, whitish gray. The clove adds a dusty warmth that remains distant, disembodied, and is followed by a broken sweetness. At no point in its existence is this fragrance - and this is very Ellena - stronger than medium strength at most and yet present, challenging for the nose, downright difficult from time to time.
Heaven Can Wait commands and offers seriousness, remembrance, perhaps quiet regret. It is a fragrance like a chance walk along a street where we once thought we loved someone. Like a forgotten and rediscovered item of clothing from a person we should have caressed much more often than we did. Like tender words practiced a hundred times that we never dared to say. And like a long-awaited kiss that never happened.
Conclusion: all Ellena and then again not. Only his name, which I don't understand as I experience it.
9 Comments
Kurai
NicheOnly
BamBamNYC
GeovaMuse
Holscentbar
