This perfume has only three notes—ink, coffee, and vetiver—and it’s supposed to evoke the smell of a man reading a newspaper in a café. I’m always hunting for an ink note and this one is among my favourite that I’ve smelled: it really does smell just like a newspaper. I can almost feel the newsprint on my fingers, inky letters rubbing off on my hands as my head fills with serif letters like a Cubist collage. Like many ink notes (Encre Noir or Fzotic’s Lampblack, say), this one is isolated from vetiver and it’s amazing how you get the distinct print-shop blackness along with the gentlemanly woodiness of the vetiver as fully separate smells, bound together by the caramelized aroma of roasting coffee beans, sweet and bitter at the same time. It’s airy and transparent, as if it were being conveyed to your nostrils by the steam of an espresso machine, and it conjures a very specific atmosphere. I picture a coffee bar in a black-and-white Italian neorealist movie (or the train-station scene in Italy Calvino’s 𝘐𝘧 𝘰𝘯 𝘢 𝘸𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘳’𝘴 𝘯𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘢 𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘷𝘦𝘭𝘦𝘳), with rain outside, windows and glasses fogging up, everyone looking distinguished in grey suits and hats, raincoats and umbrellas. The vibe is mysterious and slightly melancholy, serious and bookish. I absolutely adore the fragrance, but the projection is extremely subtle, which might just be because I’m dabbing from a vial, but I really have to press my nose against my skin to smell it at all. It’s not a longevity issue: I can apply it in the morning and still smell it eight hours later, but it never gets beyond a skin scent. It’s also very linear, smells exactly the same through the whole duration. I really want to see how it performs when sprayed, because I love it, but it would be hard to justify a bottle if it’s always going to be so weak.
This perfume has only three notes—ink, coffee, and vetiver—and it’s supposed to evoke the smell of a man reading a newspaper in a café. I’m always hunting for an ink note and this one is among my favourite that I’ve smelled: it really does smell just like a newspaper. I can almost feel the newsprint on my fingers, inky letters rubbing off on my hands as my head fills with serif letters like a Cubist collage. Like many ink notes (Encre Noir or Fzotic’s Lampblack, say), this one is isolated from vetiver and it’s amazing how you get the distinct print-shop blackness along with the gentlemanly woodiness of the vetiver as fully separate smells, bound together by the caramelized aroma of roasting coffee beans, sweet and bitter at the same time. It’s airy and transparent, as if it were being conveyed to your nostrils by the steam of an espresso machine, and it conjures a very specific atmosphere. I picture a coffee bar in a black-and-white Italian neorealist movie (or the train-station scene in Italy Calvino’s 𝘐𝘧 𝘰𝘯 𝘢 𝘸𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘳’𝘴 𝘯𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘢 𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘷𝘦𝘭𝘦𝘳), with rain outside, windows and glasses fogging up, everyone looking distinguished in grey suits and hats, raincoats and umbrellas. The vibe is mysterious and slightly melancholy, serious and bookish. I absolutely adore the fragrance, but the projection is extremely subtle, which might just be because I’m dabbing from a vial, but I really have to press my nose against my skin to smell it at all. It’s not a longevity issue: I can apply it in the morning and still smell it eight hours later, but it never gets beyond a skin scent. It’s also very linear, smells exactly the same through the whole duration. I really want to see how it performs when sprayed, because I love it, but it would be hard to justify a bottle if it’s always going to be so weak.