Castoreum
Musk
Beeswax
Cumin
Magnolia
Orange blossom absolute
Orris butter
Patchouli
Ambergris
Cistus absolute
Grapefruit
Green mandarin orange
Jasmine
Mimosa
Opoponax
Sandalwood
Vetiver
Ylang-ylang
Cinnamon
Coriander
Heliotrope
Tonka bean
06/13/2025
ClaireV
969 Reviews
ClaireV
2
Lipsmackingly powdery sourness
I can never tell if Lost in Heaven is a civety floral or a floral civet. There's a brocaded sourness of honey, pale ale, and resin in the far drydown that gives it something to rest against. But mostly this is a bunch of dollhead-sweet flowers blown out into a diffuse cloud of satiny musks and underlined with something very, very unclean - like leaning in to kiss and girl and catching a suggestion of unwashed pillowcases, scalp, and skin that's already been licked.
At first, Lost in Heaven reminds me very much of other vaguely retro indie floral civets (or civety florals), especially Maria Candida Gentile's irisy Burlesque - a mini of which I bought for myself as a birthday present and burned through in under three months - and Mardi Gras by Olympic Orchids. Then it strikes me that it's not only the civet (or technically, the ambergris in the case of Lost in Heaven) that's linking all these scents in my mind, but a certain indie treatment of the iris, or orris, that they all share. I've smelled it in Andy Tauer's iris-centric work too, most notably in Lonesome Rider and his more recent Les Années 25, and it runs like a hot streak through Francesca Bianchi's work.
The only way I can describe this specifically indie orris treatment is this: take a huge mineral-crusted rock from the beach, wipe it down quickly with a lemony disinfectant, stick it in a clear glass kiln and turn up the heat to 1370 degrees C until it vaporizes, filling the closed-in space with a glittering miasma of acid, mica, and lime-like tartness. I have a suspicion that a matchstick's worth of Ambrox or Cetalox is the fuse that ignites the orris here, with castoreum creating that dusty, soot-like dryness that approaching freshly tanned leather or suede.
The end result is a rather sour and acid-tinged iris that smells like you're smelling the material diffused in the air after a lab explosion rather than from anything growing in nature. Actually, to be fair I've smelled this 'hot lava stone' treatment of orris in landmark Guerlains too, most notably in Attrape-Coeur (one of my all-time favorite scents), which layers a dollop of peach and raspberry jam over a bed of these hissing-hot iris rocks and watches for the chemical reaction. Fridge-cold jam against hot minerals, with a side of sweet, rubbery dollhead, all blown out into sour, almost boozy mist - well, what's not to like, really?
At first, Lost in Heaven reminds me very much of other vaguely retro indie floral civets (or civety florals), especially Maria Candida Gentile's irisy Burlesque - a mini of which I bought for myself as a birthday present and burned through in under three months - and Mardi Gras by Olympic Orchids. Then it strikes me that it's not only the civet (or technically, the ambergris in the case of Lost in Heaven) that's linking all these scents in my mind, but a certain indie treatment of the iris, or orris, that they all share. I've smelled it in Andy Tauer's iris-centric work too, most notably in Lonesome Rider and his more recent Les Années 25, and it runs like a hot streak through Francesca Bianchi's work.
The only way I can describe this specifically indie orris treatment is this: take a huge mineral-crusted rock from the beach, wipe it down quickly with a lemony disinfectant, stick it in a clear glass kiln and turn up the heat to 1370 degrees C until it vaporizes, filling the closed-in space with a glittering miasma of acid, mica, and lime-like tartness. I have a suspicion that a matchstick's worth of Ambrox or Cetalox is the fuse that ignites the orris here, with castoreum creating that dusty, soot-like dryness that approaching freshly tanned leather or suede.
The end result is a rather sour and acid-tinged iris that smells like you're smelling the material diffused in the air after a lab explosion rather than from anything growing in nature. Actually, to be fair I've smelled this 'hot lava stone' treatment of orris in landmark Guerlains too, most notably in Attrape-Coeur (one of my all-time favorite scents), which layers a dollop of peach and raspberry jam over a bed of these hissing-hot iris rocks and watches for the chemical reaction. Fridge-cold jam against hot minerals, with a side of sweet, rubbery dollhead, all blown out into sour, almost boozy mist - well, what's not to like, really?
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