Escapade à Byzance Olibere 2015

It start with dance battle between black peppery cinnamon, ginger, saffron and mild citruses just to get you go. Later on I smell thyme and cypress with just a dash of incense, but not exactly the church type of one with heliotrope which transcends into warm amber-benzoin dry-down!

I am really impressed with how versatile it is! I never expected that I could wear it in high temperatures and that I would still be getting fresh whiffs of it through the day! Not dry and exhausting in warmer days! Longevity is around 5 hours on my skin and sillage is medium but best in first 2 hours.

Escapade is really a good example of a nice blended oriental, spicy-aromatic fragrance!

Escapade à Byzance by French newcomer Olibère is for me sadly nothing more than a worthless addiction to the endless galore of Duchaufour’s creations, and particularly one of the most negligible. I guess the budget was tight here, both for the materials and for the nose, so the result is both cheap and uninspired. To cut it short this smells to me as an extremely synthetic blend of ambery-woody incense with... well, not much more. Something sweetish, spicy-dusty, vaguely similar to cinnamon but so generic and artificial that it does not trigger any specific association to notes for me. The few notes I can “recognize” with some stretch are the abovementioned amber (nothing warm, rather the ubiquitous greyish ambroxan), woods (the usual synthetic cedar stuff) and a really cheap incense note. That’s it. It doesn’t stink, but... 2015, niche? This smells like something Jil Sander could have come up with in 2001 at a third of the price. Meh...

4,5-5/10

A spicy start, with a slight sharpness. I perceive cinnamon, ginger, and a hint of citrus. The incense immediately blends into my first overall impression, which presents itself as warm and light brown.
An hour later, sweet notes become increasingly prominent. And it becomes slightly floral. The scent slowly develops towards gourmand.
This composition remains unchanged for me.
Unfortunately, the intensity decreases significantly after 4 hours. However, a subtle hint is still noticeable after 9 hours.

1902, when Constantinople was still the Orient.
In the covered market
the merchant asks the traveler,
if she likes spices.
She breathes in the colorful bazaar,
a rush of everything she likes and doesn’t like,
foreign and unattainable.
The cinnamon, she knows well,
but the red?
“Safran,” yes, she’ll take some with her.
“Ah, and a lemon,”
for refreshment, of course.

Deeper the traveler goes,
Kapalı Çarşı is the name of the market,
it burned down, so they say.
She can still smell the burning wood,
the ash, the wind that weakly reaches her.
Or is it the incense that wafts towards her from afar?
A church, here in the Orient?
As a Catholic, she finds it nice.
But then she sees the mountains,
piled up before her,
2 piastres per gram.
It looks like rock candy,
she thinks.
“I’ll gladly take some with me,”
for reflection, of course.

She wanders around,
her bag is full,
her head is buzzing,
the scent is too strong.
Finally, in the evening, she lies down in bed,
takes a bath,
or rather,
well,
the page was so kind.
She feels foreign,
a bit cold.
She closes her eyes
and it occurs to her,
it’s already Christmas back home!
And at home,
in the rough Munich air,
there are crescent cookies with
a lovely vanilla scent.
She wishes
she could take some with her,
for remembrance, of course.