Ella and Lil Kamila Aubre Eau de Parfum

Uncommented Scents No. 191

Ella and Lil Eau de Parfum contains several ingredients that I don't particularly favor (ambrette seeds, coffee, cocoa, cardamom, and leather), but what a surprise: The fragrance quickly captivated and fascinated me with its aura. Often, the whole is indeed more than the sum of its parts.

How is that? An attempt at deconstruction:

Starting from the result, one first notices powdery dry accents, a less warm than elevated sound of sweet-spicy nuances: Coffee and cocoa are plausible but not decipherable individually, cardamom is clearly recognizable, as is the clove that is perceptible until the end. I understand the leather note here in the traditional sense (it smells rather minimally ambered or subtly resinous, definitely not like the penetrating postmodern suede notes that would be as far from a brand like Kamila Aubre as the moon).

Originally, I was interested in the fragrance because of the idiosyncratic porcini note, which appears multiple times in Kamila Aubre's creations, such as in Soliloquy Eau de Parfum or Gloire de Dijon Eau de Parfum, and which gives Kamila's fragrances a delicately earthy and animalistic, yet distinctly exquisite note. I have emphasized several times that mushroom notes in fragrances do not smell like a mushroom pan, but are rather comparable to the earthy and bodily notes of patchouli, even if they don't actually smell similar. They do not dominate fragrances but always remain in the background, leaving a fine aroma reminiscent of forest soil: more unconsciously dreamed than consciously noticed.

Reading: Ludwig Tieck: "Der blonde Eckbert" or "Der Runenberg"
Music: The Cure: "A Forest" or Antonin Dvořák: "From the Bohemian Forest"
Indulgence: Chocolate with dried porcini mushrooms

I kindly ask to refrain from comments that mushrooms belong only in the pan and not in fragrances, as long as this scent has not been tested.