Beautiful stuff PART I: chimera labdanum

Over the last few years of my passion, I have stumbled across many fragrances, some of which I liked, others not so much. I was able to put together a great basket of fragrances that suit me and my skin and that - for me - bring out the best in the given fragrance pyramid. Now, in this series, I would like to honour and present fragrances that have remained particularly memorable to me and that have had a lasting impact on me and my view of fragrances.

I would like to start with cistus and labdanum. Just to explain, cistus is the plant itself, labdanum the resin that comes out of the plant. No other substance accompanies me at the moment as much as these two. Often a love-hate relationship, as I increasingly get the feeling that certain labdanum varieties are repulsive to my nose, or rather that they are falsely projected from my skin. Possibly a false perception?

My first noticeable experience with cistus was with Attaquer Le Soleil - Marquis de Sade , which was a real dream on my nose. Since only cistus is given as a note here, it seems all the more amazing how multi-faceted this fragrance is. There was an undulating movement in the scent, which alternated between lightness, intensity, light animalism and honey-like scents. A great fragrance, but similar to molecular fragrances, everyone interprets it differently. However, it showed me how complex fragrances can be without having to have a huge fragrance pyramid.

The more I tested my way through the various brands, the more I noticed how the hardness of the labdanum increased due to my change in scent preferences. While the fragrances I tested were mainly honey and amber tones, I have now arrived at the hard, dry, rather dark-smoky labdanum varieties. Particularly in Fetish pour Homme Parfum and Le Lion de Chanel are the very creaky-dark varieties that tend more towards dark leather, animalic or smoke.

However, I have now reached a point where certain fragrances with a dominant labdanum note become too much for me. More often, I find the whole thing annoying, too dominant or generally quite unbalanced. My AHA experiences in this regard were the "Parfums de la Nuit" series by Roja and especially my repeated glimpse of Grand Soir. The latter I remembered as much more lovely, was so creaky on the skin and in my nose full of dark labdanum that I could no longer enjoy the amber notes. The PDLN range was also very good overall, also much more balanced as each fragrance employed different "harshness" levels of labdanum, yet labdanum was still quite noticeable in retrospect.

Surprisingly, the hardest of the rubric Le Lion de Chanel was less distracting to my nose, as the rest of the scent was simply constructed in such a way that it almost passed for an animalic scent and thus had a clearer structure. It just seemed fitting in the construct, whereas with Grand Soir it seemed too forced, which surprised me a little after so long.

the fragrances I can continue to recommend without a guilty conscience with a noticeable labdanum/cistus note are:

Attaquer Le Soleil - Marquis de Sade
1740

Or du Sérail