Mon Numéro 10 L'Artisan Parfumeur 2009

Currently, L'Artisans are once again being offered at a discount chain, as has already been reported on Parfumo. Among them is the seemingly lesser-known "Mon Numéro 10," which has different fragrance pyramids: the one listed here on Parfumo and the one featured at a well-known niche shop.

Anyway: both sound interesting to me, and I like L'Artisans anyway (the bottles alone are a visual and tactile Hallelujah for me). After a brief hesitation, I bought it, quite curious. Here I read initial impressions of liqueur, rum, Lekkalekka. I like that! Fusel, amber, leather - bring it on!

I sprayed it.

Yes, it starts off fusel. However, it’s not rum or dark liqueur, but rather a clear one with sharpness and a citrus attack. I pause. But not bad. Different. Leather is already in the background, rather delicate, light to medium brown, smooth leather, not too soft, but also not coarse. Well-groomed. Smoke? Yes, that’s there too. Rather light, rather cool, rather discreet.

The scent becomes cooler on me. Almost sour, at least when I get close to my skin. It conveys a slightly metallic freshness, gently enveloped by the leather, leaving a strange yet strangely attractive hybrid impression. And it remains transparent and understated.

From time to time, I catch a whiff when I move, and that is quite wonderful and fine, almost "special," also with a certain warmth. Unobtrusive, yet you notice it. Who or what is that? What smells so interesting, non-perfumey, creamy, indefinable, discreet, yet somehow penetrating? What has something of soft wood, but also something sharp at the edges, of non-coarse leather, of skin, of spices, of freshness and warmth at the same time? And that with moderate projection?

If I try to capture it by pressing my nose to my skin, it’s no longer there; instead, I only smell a certain sour sharpness. All that the Numéro 10 exudes in its diffuse aura is not directly graspable; it eludes me.
But I don’t want to get too esoteric; let’s say it openly: this is one that strongly engages (or repels) with the different skin scents. Even though I still don’t know how a scent can smell so beautifully clouded, yet when sniffed directly at its source, it becomes so biting.

Well, it takes a long time on me before it changes more offensively to the warmer side, even when sniffed directly on the skin. After about 5-6 hours, the temperature shifts; it becomes sweeter, more lovely, more amber-like, more vanillic, darker. Now it is indeed delicious, even on the skin, and the projection doesn’t seem to diminish at all.
However, the red thread remains; I can still recognize the Numéro 10 from the first hours in the base. It is a hard-to-name, transparent, and interesting theme that wanders from sharp-cool to purring-warm, oscillating between feminine and masculine.

A fascinating number, this 10.