Mxxx. Eris Parfums 2019

Antoine Lie is not one of my favorite perfumers, but what he has created with his ambregris triptych, “Mxxx.”, “Escale en Indonésie”, and “Ambre Suprême” - hats off!

We owe the experience of one of the most legendary and myth-laden fragrance materials in an unprecedented intensity and glory to his acquaintance with Rémi Pulvérail, founder and owner of “L’Atelier Français Des Matières”. His company develops tinctures of the highest purity and quality using special processes, aiming to set a counterpoint against the ever-advancing leveling of the market through increasingly interchangeable ingredients.
Pulvérail's wife, Valérie, is the founder and owner of the much-acclaimed label “Les Indémodables”, whose fragrances wonderfully illustrate the benefits of having experienced perfumers access truly top-notch ingredients. In addition, these works naturally serve - a classic win-win situation - as perfect advertising vehicles for her husband's company.

Rémi Pulvérail now has a special ambregris tincture in the catalog that convinced Antoine Lie due to its balance of creaminess, saltiness, and animalic character. But he did not only choose this for “Mxxx.” from AFDM's portfolio, as Barbara Herman from Eris Parfums reports, but also a particularly rich, spicy, almost animalic cocoa from Trinidad, which has never been used in perfumery before, as well as a special “green” vanilla from Madagascar, which only achieves its extraordinary qualities through elaborate freezing and extraction techniques.

All of this flowed into the formula of “Mxxx.”, and I find you can smell it: a quantum leap compared to the already quite successful predecessor scent “Mx.”!
Do the two additional “x” stand for that?
No idea. “Mx.” wants to be the gender-neutral variant of “Mr.” and “Ms.”, as the scent understands itself - rightly so; without me wanting to delve further into the difference between “unisex” and “gender-neutral”, which would exceed the scope here.

“Mxxx.” starts spicy, dry, and with a slight sharpness. At the same time, the cocoa notes begin to bloom, almost without sweetness in tow, but rather unfolding a whole kaleidoscope of rather bitter, buttery, almost nutty aromas, flanked by bright, polished wood. After just a few minutes, however, the real player of this fragrance begins to stretch its tentacles in all directions like a many-armed octopus: the amber.

We all know well enough its synthetic, indispensable substitute from modern perfumery, which ultimately can only represent a fraction of the scent profile of the natural starting product.
Here, however, it unfolds in full regalia, multifaceted, amorphous, and hard to grasp: salty, smelling of warm, pulsating skin, the vastness of the ocean, old books, driftwood, slightly mineral, intoxicatingly animalic, and, and, and...
Hardly any fragrance component boasts (and confuses!) with such a diffuse profile, but the main task of amber was, in the past, when it was still abundantly available due to industrial whaling, rather different: it served to make a fragrance radiate, to widen, to intensify. It was allowed to act in the background, as a puppeteer offstage, so to speak. The same fragrance concept once with, once without amber, and all test subjects reliably choose the version with amber - so perfumers report from their work.
Fortunately, the protection of sperm whales came just in time before the last slaughtered specimens could have their amber directly extracted. From then on, one had to rely on searching beaches worldwide for oxidized whale vomit (or however the sperm whale excretes the indigestible remains of its food - no one knows for sure...) or to resort to a synthetically developed substitute that is whale-friendly, the so-called ambrein, which could already be isolated from natural amber in the 1950s and with whose help the ambroxan (along with countless successors) was later developed, which is now used as if there were no tomorrow.

But here, dear friends of olfaction, true gray amber is at play - real!
And you can smell it.

The image of the octopus fits perfectly for me with the effect of amber: with its tentacles, it encompasses all other fragrance components, draws them in, holds them close, but at the same time, like a chameleon, adopts their coloration. It does not overshadow everything; it has a much too unclear scent contour for that, but it permeates everything, lets it emulsify, shine, and only upon closer sniffing do you catch a glimpse of its outlines: the saltiness reveals it, the faint animalic hint that Antoine Lie extends into the base with a subtle pinch of hyrax, the hint of oceanic minerality, the warmth.

The much-praised predecessor scent “Mx.” was based on a comparable concept: a woody-spicy semi-gourmand, to which Venezuelan cocoa and leathery-animalic castoreum gave its special character. Although the term “semi-gourmand” is not entirely accurate, as both fragrances only brush the gourmand terrain with their respective cocoa nuances. These nuances are so bitter and herbaceous that they require a balsamic addition like benzoin to give the fragrances a certain roundness towards the base, which is completed in both cases with pronounced patchouli and a hint less prominent vetiver.

THE distinguishing feature between the two fragrances is, however, the use of amber, especially in such intensity (7% in the perfume oil content, which is a lot!). It transforms the already extremely sensual “Mx.” into a true sensuality bomb, whose heightened sensuality might be too much for some over time. But then again, the version without amber is ready.
For my part, I like “Mx.”. But I am truly excited about “Mxxx.”.

With its opulence and amber bliss, the fragrance almost has something of a vintage extrait, which speaks of long-gone golden times when fragrant ingredients were not yet scrutinized for consumer protection purposes and ethical questions regarding their extraction were disregarded.
Fortunately, such times are past!
But the fact that we can shamelessly sniff real gray amber with Antoine Lie's ambregris triptych (interestingly, it smells most intense in “Escale en Indonésie”, although only 5% is used, in an otherwise quite sparse environment) almost conveys a certain decadence to me, which today, due to all the balance and awareness, almost gives me a slight guilty conscience.
A very slight one.
No, actually none at all.