Reliqvia Filippo Sorcinelli 2021

I confess, it took a considerable amount of courage to delve deeper into the work of this perfumer. This is really not my usual territory at all. Of course, I also looked into his background story, watched the documentary about him, and thus curiosity won out. I expected nothing less than an extraordinary and probably rather unbearable work of art for an average perfume lover like me, which I simply wanted to test to broaden my fragrance horizons. I just ignored the story about the crucifixion nail.

What I experienced, however, was a scent that is artistically exceptional, and yet my fear of smoky, resinous clouds full of gloom was completely unfounded. On the contrary, I am thrilled by how Filippo Sorcinelli uses spices, woods, and incense-not just the incense itself-so that the result does not come across as smoky, clerical, dark, or reminiscent of Gothic or even Walpurgis Night. I experience the fragrance on my skin as remarkably clean, velvety-silky, and rather silvery. It is rounder and much more complex and expressive than the incense fragrances from Comme des Garçons, but nothing here overwhelms me, and I tend to be rather anxious in this regard. If a perfume feels too dense, I give up quickly. It becomes too exhausting for me, and I can't truly appreciate the beauty of complex formulations. Reliqvia, on the other hand, is once again a fragrance experience that I find truly enriching.

I will definitely use up the sample. Whether I will then purchase a bottle is still up in the air, especially since the bottle itself represents the symbol that is to be honored as a relic in a rather blatant way. That even puts me off a little. But that is completely unimportant at the moment. I am simply excited about a new fragrance experience.