Top Notes 
Green mandarin orange
Mandarin aldehyde
Mandora
Anisaldehyde
Nutmeg
Heart Notes 
Ginger
Cardamom
Carrot seed
Cinnamon
Fir balsam
Base Notes 
Amberwood
Cade juniper
Leather
Maple
Milk
Ooonidda
42 Reviews
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Ooonidda
Helpful Review
8
Anticipation for Chai
From the category Risky Blind Buys: Once again, the notes and the description lured me in. Moreover, Flair is a relatively reliable supplier of never boring fragrances. Since the matcha scent sounded like a keyword perennial from the gourmand department, I felt tempted to take a gamble and put everything on the other new and less heavily promoted candidate. The odds were good!
Margaux Le Paih-Guérin is a young and promising perfumer. She was trained in classical perfumery and has practically grown up in her mother's independent perfumery in Brittany. Her style is, given her background, all the more experimental, and she has quite a knack for synthetics. Flair seems to be the right place for her to really let loose.
Now to the scent: Let us not be deterred by all the ...alones, ...woods, ...acetates, and ...oids. This is what a truly transparent fragrance ingredient list looks like outside of pure marketing. If you are only interested in the main accords, the Versatile side summarizes it as follows:
Spicy. Chai. Milky. Cinnamon. Smoky. Fir tree. Creamy. Warm. Cardamom.
It is exactly that and so much more. The opening consists of milky, fatty cardamom chai and a wintery cold fir branch. I didn’t just observe this: No, the ahead-running friend has stretched it out and lets it go just as we turn around - a blast of fir and icy snow whips into my face. It is downright cold when inhaling.
Quickly, creamy-fresh leather joins in. It’s somehow clean, but also sweet, creamy-milky leather. Sounds crazy, and it is, but it’s a wonderfully refreshing facet of the leather accord.
Over the next hour, the fir gains an apparently menthol-like coldness, becoming darker green and richer. The other chai spices peek shyly from behind Daddy Cardamom, but always remain in his deliciously spicy shadow. Even the cinnamon, which usually slaps you with the Big Red, cannot compete with the cardamom-milk-leather-fir trio.
Somewhere between heart and base, smoke also makes an appearance. With the menthol-like cold and the present fir, a clear image emerges (for me): This is not about the chai itself; it’s about the anticipation of a chai while you are somewhere outside in winter. Somehow, everything in the scent is louder than the chai, while the chai is always present. Even in the base, the warm creamy leather and the slightly lactonic spicy accords take over without screaming chai.
I see myself trudging through the snow, cold air, red cheeks. My airways are already tingling from all the cold air I’ve breathed in. Since a supposed friend whipped the fat snow-covered fir branch in my face, there are probably some needles stuck deep in my airways. With my leather mittens lined with fur, I keep rubbing my face and nose to check if everything is still intact.
Slowly but surely, we are approaching the cabin in the mountains. Someone is waiting for us there. This person has already started the stove and burned various logs of conifer wood in it. It smells slightly of smoke, which has found its resinous-woody place in the crystal-clear, cold air. I enter the cabin and throw my leather mittens onto the warm stove, hoping they will dry out and their sweet leather scent will mix with the fresh, rich aroma of the cardamom tea. It’s perfect, just how I like it: strong, spicy, more cardamom than cinnamon, and only a small spoonful of forest honey has been stirred into it. Everything was then finished off with a good amount of fatty milk, so I see little oil bubbles floating on the surface.
The cabin is not decorated in a big Christmas style, except for some dried orange slices strung up on strings, which emit a slightly sweet but not really strong scent, swaying gently in the air currents of hot and cold around the stove.
Time to warm my cold, wet feet by the stove and keep the cat from burning its whiskers at the fireplace.
Margaux Le Paih-Guérin is a young and promising perfumer. She was trained in classical perfumery and has practically grown up in her mother's independent perfumery in Brittany. Her style is, given her background, all the more experimental, and she has quite a knack for synthetics. Flair seems to be the right place for her to really let loose.
Now to the scent: Let us not be deterred by all the ...alones, ...woods, ...acetates, and ...oids. This is what a truly transparent fragrance ingredient list looks like outside of pure marketing. If you are only interested in the main accords, the Versatile side summarizes it as follows:
Spicy. Chai. Milky. Cinnamon. Smoky. Fir tree. Creamy. Warm. Cardamom.
It is exactly that and so much more. The opening consists of milky, fatty cardamom chai and a wintery cold fir branch. I didn’t just observe this: No, the ahead-running friend has stretched it out and lets it go just as we turn around - a blast of fir and icy snow whips into my face. It is downright cold when inhaling.
Quickly, creamy-fresh leather joins in. It’s somehow clean, but also sweet, creamy-milky leather. Sounds crazy, and it is, but it’s a wonderfully refreshing facet of the leather accord.
Over the next hour, the fir gains an apparently menthol-like coldness, becoming darker green and richer. The other chai spices peek shyly from behind Daddy Cardamom, but always remain in his deliciously spicy shadow. Even the cinnamon, which usually slaps you with the Big Red, cannot compete with the cardamom-milk-leather-fir trio.
Somewhere between heart and base, smoke also makes an appearance. With the menthol-like cold and the present fir, a clear image emerges (for me): This is not about the chai itself; it’s about the anticipation of a chai while you are somewhere outside in winter. Somehow, everything in the scent is louder than the chai, while the chai is always present. Even in the base, the warm creamy leather and the slightly lactonic spicy accords take over without screaming chai.
I see myself trudging through the snow, cold air, red cheeks. My airways are already tingling from all the cold air I’ve breathed in. Since a supposed friend whipped the fat snow-covered fir branch in my face, there are probably some needles stuck deep in my airways. With my leather mittens lined with fur, I keep rubbing my face and nose to check if everything is still intact.
Slowly but surely, we are approaching the cabin in the mountains. Someone is waiting for us there. This person has already started the stove and burned various logs of conifer wood in it. It smells slightly of smoke, which has found its resinous-woody place in the crystal-clear, cold air. I enter the cabin and throw my leather mittens onto the warm stove, hoping they will dry out and their sweet leather scent will mix with the fresh, rich aroma of the cardamom tea. It’s perfect, just how I like it: strong, spicy, more cardamom than cinnamon, and only a small spoonful of forest honey has been stirred into it. Everything was then finished off with a good amount of fatty milk, so I see little oil bubbles floating on the surface.
The cabin is not decorated in a big Christmas style, except for some dried orange slices strung up on strings, which emit a slightly sweet but not really strong scent, swaying gently in the air currents of hot and cold around the stove.
Time to warm my cold, wet feet by the stove and keep the cat from burning its whiskers at the fireplace.
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