Butter
Apricot
Cypress
Immortelle
Cardamom
Chamomile
Juniper
Milk
Petitgrain
Sandalwood
Tobacco
06/13/2025
ClaireV
731 Reviews
ClaireV
1
Strange fragments knitted loosely
Selperniku is a real head-scratcher. The list of notes, impressions, and ideas I have had while wearing this one goes on for several pages. I puzzle over this one in particular, wondering if my experience of sandalwood and butter (butyric) notes is so vastly different to everyone else's so as to render my report invalid. John has nailed the limey, curdy texture of real sandalwood, but the fragrance itself does not, in fact, smell at all like sandalwood. Neither does it smell like butter, in any way, shape, or form, to me. Or salt, really.
Instead, what the fragrance seems to be doing is to take one small facet of all its constituent materials - salt, apricot, sandalwood, butter - and isolate them in the perfume, excising them from their wholeness. The result is that the nose recognizes one part of the material, but because it has been removed from its overall context, it strikes us as being both unfamiliar and familiar at the same time. Some of us are taking those fragments of sandalwood and peach and butter and rebuilding the whole picture in our mind; I personally cannot, only perceiving fragments here and there. Thus, I smell the slightly vomity undertone of milk, but not actual butter. I smell the rubbery, tart skin of the apricot, but not the fruit itself. Very clever.
I should mention that the topnotes of Selperniku smell entirely of freshly-crushed lavender buds to me, and specifically, the dried English lavender variety that one gets in sachets. I get the fierce, purple roar of lavender at exactly the same moment as I am smelling a juicy, overripe peach or apricot note, and the dual experience momentarily shocks me. It is a very unusual effect, and one that I find so compelling that I spray it over and over again to experience. Your mileage may vary (and, boy, has that overused phrase in perfumery circles really earned its keep with the January Scent Project!).
Directly under the lavender and peach opening, I sense a layer of curdled milk shifting below. It is only slightly vomitous, and probably only to me, but joined with a purplish saltwater taffy note I perceive, it adds up to something that approximates a lactonic wood accord.
The peach/apricot disappears for a while, but makes an appearance again after a few hours, this time in the shape of a slightly sweaty, rubbery note that hints at fruit skin more than the flesh. Kafkaesque notes that this could be osmanthus, and I'm inclined to agree, because at one point, the scent recalls the rubbery apricot leather of Osmanthe Yunnan. The rubbery fruit skin of the apricot mixed with the lactones certainly adds up to something suggestive of human skin, and perhaps specifically, the scent of a woman's nape after a full day of wearing a gently peachy perfume, like Chant d'Aromes.
In the far drydown, blowing on my skin revealed a layering of piquant green leaves over the tart, rubbery lactonic peach skin note, which smells to me like the juice from dock leaves we would use to treat nettle burns when we were kids. That, plus, the late return of those dried lavender buds, make me think of Selperniku as being far more a rustic, countryside-ish fragrance than it at first makes itself out to be.
Instead, what the fragrance seems to be doing is to take one small facet of all its constituent materials - salt, apricot, sandalwood, butter - and isolate them in the perfume, excising them from their wholeness. The result is that the nose recognizes one part of the material, but because it has been removed from its overall context, it strikes us as being both unfamiliar and familiar at the same time. Some of us are taking those fragments of sandalwood and peach and butter and rebuilding the whole picture in our mind; I personally cannot, only perceiving fragments here and there. Thus, I smell the slightly vomity undertone of milk, but not actual butter. I smell the rubbery, tart skin of the apricot, but not the fruit itself. Very clever.
I should mention that the topnotes of Selperniku smell entirely of freshly-crushed lavender buds to me, and specifically, the dried English lavender variety that one gets in sachets. I get the fierce, purple roar of lavender at exactly the same moment as I am smelling a juicy, overripe peach or apricot note, and the dual experience momentarily shocks me. It is a very unusual effect, and one that I find so compelling that I spray it over and over again to experience. Your mileage may vary (and, boy, has that overused phrase in perfumery circles really earned its keep with the January Scent Project!).
Directly under the lavender and peach opening, I sense a layer of curdled milk shifting below. It is only slightly vomitous, and probably only to me, but joined with a purplish saltwater taffy note I perceive, it adds up to something that approximates a lactonic wood accord.
The peach/apricot disappears for a while, but makes an appearance again after a few hours, this time in the shape of a slightly sweaty, rubbery note that hints at fruit skin more than the flesh. Kafkaesque notes that this could be osmanthus, and I'm inclined to agree, because at one point, the scent recalls the rubbery apricot leather of Osmanthe Yunnan. The rubbery fruit skin of the apricot mixed with the lactones certainly adds up to something suggestive of human skin, and perhaps specifically, the scent of a woman's nape after a full day of wearing a gently peachy perfume, like Chant d'Aromes.
In the far drydown, blowing on my skin revealed a layering of piquant green leaves over the tart, rubbery lactonic peach skin note, which smells to me like the juice from dock leaves we would use to treat nettle burns when we were kids. That, plus, the late return of those dried lavender buds, make me think of Selperniku as being far more a rustic, countryside-ish fragrance than it at first makes itself out to be.
Saturnalis
Erswan
