Buen Camino, from Chronotope was released in 2020. The perfumer behind this creation is Carter Weeks Maddox. The notes are Almond, Asphalt, Coffee, Immortelle, Lavender, Lemon, Orange, Spicy Notes.
What a glorious curiosity this is: an off-kilter gourmond of sorts, but also at the same time it also resembles the odd non-perfume Comme des Garcons used to specialise in.
It's available as an extrait and EDP. Both produce roughly the same scent but are made from entirely different ingredients.
So it smells of coffee and of cake (a dry, bready cake). It smells of citrus and of florals. It also smells of ointment, of dry, dusty roads, of sweat and of heat. The EDP is a little sweeter, the extrait a little spicier. Some notes emerge more prominently in one as opposed to the other: the EDP has a prominant liquorice smell at one point, for example, and I can smell the dust more clearly in the latter. Oddly, the extrait doesn’t last as long on my skin, though if I had to choose between the two, that's probably the one I would go for. In both instances, and with most of the Chronotope line, the smells retreats and advances when you least expect it, at times seeing to disappear entirely, then suddenly re-emerging with unexpected force
You don't need to know the backstory to appreciate this: which is perfumer Carter Weeks Maddox following the pilgrimage trail of Camino de Santiago de Compostela, not as an act of devotion, but of exorcism, suffering shattered, infected feet and blood poisoning along the way, fed coffee and almond cake, passing through Spain's arid landscapes. Though you can smell all of those things in the finished scent. You can also imagine it as an abstract avante garde concoction, or conjure up your own scenarios to fit the notes provided. Which is the beauty of perfumery, I suppose.
Like all of Chronotope's perfumes, there's a fierce intelligence and intent on display here, but it's not simply an intellectual exercise: you can feel the emotion put into its creation. It's pretty bloody amazing, and it's next on my perfume shopping list, when funds allow. All the Chronotopes I've sampled so far have been real growers, and it's quickly becoming one of my favourite perfume houses.
What a glorious curiosity this is: an off-kilter gourmond of sorts, but also at the same time it also resembles the odd non-perfume Comme des Garcons used to specialise in.
It's available as an extrait and EDP. Both produce roughly the same scent but are made from entirely different ingredients.
So it smells of coffee and of cake (a dry, bready cake). It smells of citrus and of florals. It also smells of ointment, of dry, dusty roads, of sweat and of heat. The EDP is a little sweeter, the extrait a little spicier. Some notes emerge more prominently in one as opposed to the other: the EDP has a prominant liquorice smell at one point, for example, and I can smell the dust more clearly in the latter. Oddly, the extrait doesn’t last as long on my skin, though if I had to choose between the two, that's probably the one I would go for. In both instances, and with most of the Chronotope line, the smells retreats and advances when you least expect it, at times seeing to disappear entirely, then suddenly re-emerging with unexpected force
You don't need to know the backstory to appreciate this: which is perfumer Carter Weeks Maddox following the pilgrimage trail of Camino de Santiago de Compostela, not as an act of devotion, but of exorcism, suffering shattered, infected feet and blood poisoning along the way, fed coffee and almond cake, passing through Spain's arid landscapes. Though you can smell all of those things in the finished scent. You can also imagine it as an abstract avante garde concoction, or conjure up your own scenarios to fit the notes provided. Which is the beauty of perfumery, I suppose.
Like all of Chronotope's perfumes, there's a fierce intelligence and intent on display here, but it's not simply an intellectual exercise: you can feel the emotion put into its creation. It's pretty bloody amazing, and it's next on my perfume shopping list, when funds allow. All the Chronotopes I've sampled so far have been real growers, and it's quickly becoming one of my favourite perfume houses.