Sancti Liquides Imaginaires 2011

For over a decade now, my perfume seller has danced to his own fragrant rhythm. Retail prices are merely a suggestion in his world. He carves out curious bargains from the lesser known, the light, the quiet colognes that whisper rather than shout. I’ve wandered into many such serendipities—Sancti being one of them. Just €50, and a blind buy, but guided by the steady hand of Sonia Constant and a hunch rooted in incense love—it was a gamble that paid in scent and soul.

My affair with frankincense—olibanum, if we’re getting poetic—was born not in temples but through perfume. Gucci pour Homme struck first, smiting me with smoky splendor. The note has since become a meditative tether, a resinous retreat when the world grows loud.

Sancti, though—Sancti floats. It’s incense reborn in light. From its first breath, it sparkles—fizzy, soapy, kissed by pine. Aldehydes shimmer like sunlight on lemon peel, which then gently melts into the tart-fresh pull of frankincense. Mandarin and bergamot weave citrus ribbons, while ginger slices through with its green, spicy verve, leading the way to a heart spiced with nutmeg, cardamom, and a wink of pink pepper. The forest floor isn't far behind—cypress and fir lay down a piney cushion, while grapefruit brightens the green pulse that vetiver deepens below.

This is no oil painting—it’s frankincense in watercolor. Built on an airy scaffold of Iso E Super, Cedramber, and clean musks, the scent feels both diaphanous and dimensional. Cashmeran steps forward like a textured thread, Ambroxan hums quietly in the base. Hydrocarboresine—the smoky heart of labdanum—adds a sacred glow. Even the patchouli, stripped of its grit, reemerges cool and camphor-like, a ghost of its earthier kin.

On skin, Sancti is soft-spoken—after an initial radiant burst, it retreats to a gentle whisper that lingers for hours. On fabric, it settles in like a blessing.

As a wearer, I’m enchanted. As a student of scent, I’m in awe. Sancti isn’t just a fragrance—it’s a study in softness, in restraint, in how incense can lift rather than anchor. A perfume like a prayer breathed through silk.

9.5/10

What a fantastic fragrance, and exactly matching my taste!

Sancti – Eau Delà is a dream of iridescent aldehydes, a cool and deep frankincense accord and spicy-citric freshness.

Perfumes with aldehydes are likely to be disdained. Whoever knows Chanel No. 5 will most of all identify this not so romantic denomination with that buttery note which so characteristically stands out from that classic's head notes. Actually, we understand the note aldehydes as a designation for a whole group of chemically related substances, but with different scents. According to my experience these scents range from butter-like to iridescently cool, or: from an opulent oak barrel Chardonnay to a fresh and young Clairette Blanche.

The aldehydes of Sancti have the latter structure. Their iridescent quality evokes pictures in me: a flight through cold heights, racy and dizzying, passing by mighty cumulus clouds that loom in bright white before a deep blue sky.

This “dizzy” fragrance character is supported by a frankincense accord – an accord that with its dry and slender depth points far beyond the must of old church masonry. Herbal and coniferous notes may also play their part in that deepness, or – depending on the point of view – that vertiginous height.

The third party is a combination of citric notes and cardamom which adds an airiness close to suasiveness.

For me, cardamom is a highly interesting note. While often involved, not many perfumers allow the cardamom to distinctly stand out. Citrus Pardisi by Czech & Speake comes to my mind, as well as the supposedly discontinued Millesimé by Ronaldo Esper. With Sancti, we may add another one to this short list.

Whoever breaks open a cardamom pod and crushes its content between the fingers will realise that the ethereal oils will form a peculiar citric impression. Very questionable to speak about a spicy note in a strict sense. I admit it is one of my favourite notes in perfumery. Within the spectrum of citric notes, cardamom takes a very robust stand, similar to grapefruit.

Looking at the aldehydes Sancti may be compared to Neil Morris' Vapor. But whereas that maestro from Boston may have overdone a bit with dizzying the customers, Sancti proves much more wearable. The aldehydes are cautiously embedded within an airy lightness – and so, Sancti is the finer fragrance for sure.

Concerning longevity and development one has to compromise. The development is rather quick and seems to come to a halt after two hours. More than pyramidal, Sancti exhibits a star pattern in its development: the full complexness is there in the beginning and gleams into all directions. One by one, these star beams fade away until there is a slightly woody frankincense accord left in the middle.

It's a pity that this is happening within two hours. Reapplying may not completely bring back the perfectly balanced sensation from the beginning as the frankincense will be enhanced by that as well. And so, Sancti -Eau Delà presents itself as a perfume for gourmets – not gourmands – who can appreciate and enjoy a special fragrant moment.

It has to be mentioned that the Sancti star beams have different length. I got the impression they appear differently in their sillage than directly on skin. After the frankincense had pushed aside everything else on skin, there was still a faint air of tenderness in my room which brought up memories of the long gone vintage L'Air du Temps by Nina Ricci.

But why must frankincense always pay for a religious naming? I admit, between all those cumulus clouds, a citric and kitschy orange post card madonna may materialise herself – given the fact that the pilgrim arriving at Santiago de Compostela is decently hypoglycaemic before drowning himself in those wafts of frankincense

This scent is truly a mystery to me... I'm not the biggest fan of Liquides Imaginaire, as Bloody Wood is the one that really resonates with me, and most of the others feel overpriced for their quality to me. This one... Is it a good liturgical scent? I still do not know. It has the light, not gloomy kind of church vibe that I'm familiar with thanks to Grimoire , but it isn't as good as that one.
I appreciate the way it portraits a cathedral in a sunny day, not overly solemn but peaceful, but it smells too much citrusy for my own tastes. Lavender and frankincense and myrrh makes me like it, but on the other hand I'm not a fan of resins and labdanum so it's still a meh... You show me the light, and in the same perfume decide to show me the resins that confuses me. I do not know to this day if I do like or not. Definitely it is not smoky, tho.

Okay, I’ve been testing it and smelling it for the past two or three days, both on paper and on my skin, and I’m having a hard time writing this review because I can’t quite pin it down in my head.

The first time I tested it, three days ago, I was torn between “I think I really like this” and “wait, no, actually I’m not sure, it’s weird,” but I don’t think it’s weird; it’s just a genre of fragrance I’ve never had the chance to smell before. It’s something so new that my brain is fixated on the novelty (and I think it's primitive instinct of: novelty = checking for danger = constant alert and a slight source of stress), so I had a hard time knowing if I really liked it because my brain was fixated on trying to understand the scent, rather than figuring out whether I enjoyed it or not.

This is the first time that I’ve smelled an incense like this; it’s not at all heavy, resinous, or smoky like most church incense perfumes I’ve smelled before. It’s a sparkling incense, with citrus and aldehydes notes that make it fresh, which also make the fragrance wearable in any season, not just in winter.

It doesn’t smell like a Catholic church like L'Eau Trois by Diptyque, nor does it smell like an underground church crypt like Passage d’Enfer by l'Artisan Parfumeur, nor does it smell like an incense-filled forest like L’Ombre des Merveilles by Hermès. Here, from what I read after trying it, Liquide Imaginaire markets it as a fragrance that smells like holy water, apparently, and I’m kind of in agreement with that. But before reading the marketing, I smelled it blind without knowing the story, and I find that it smells more like an angel, or an abbey made of white stone, flooded with light, blessed by an angel.
This fragrance is other-worldly, and I can’t find any images from the real world in my head that could describe it; the image that best describes this scent is a sort of abbey/cathedral in the clouds, with a gigantic ceiling height, made of white light stone, with magnificent moldings, the windows wide open, a breeze blowing through the entire building, everything flooded with light, and the abbey is open on both sides into the clouds with large arches, crossed at the base by crystal-clear rivers of water flowing from the heavens, as if we were in that classic image of paradise (yet it is absolutely not an ultra-religious scent; it’s more like the scent of an angel, affiliated with no religion, but rather of the divine and spiritual realm).

It’s been quite a while since I’ve had such a hard time explaining and categorizing a fragrance (because normally I know pretty much right away how much I like or dislike a scent), and this is something I’ve never smelled before.

For now, I’d give it a 9 out of 10. It's beautiful. I sprayed it a few hours ago, and every time I open the door and step back into the room where I sprayed the fragrance, I’m surprised by the magnificent scent lingering in it.

I'll see how I feel about this fragrance once my brain stops fixating on the novelty and focuses on the scent itself, but in any case, I have a good feeling that the rating might even go up.

A meditative, herbaceous incense. Feels ancient and sacred, like walking alone in the woods and discovering a Greek amphitheater or a long-forgotten monastery in which its supply of incense has been preserved, waiting for a match. I spray this on and almost feel like I’m somewhere I shouldn’t be, somewhere I couldn’t begin to understand because it’s so far removed from the modern era. This is exactly the smell I imagine would waft from a museum exhibit if you were allowed to step over the rope or to remove the artifacts from their cases. Matter of fact, I bet that this is the smell that wisps around an archaeological dig. Love.