Have you tried this fragrance?
Share your experience and help others discover great scents
Grimoire from Anatole LeBreton features a lemony-balsamic sweetness suggestive of curative sweets and a cryptic dustiness evocative of brittle parchment and rare texts, all encircled with a pungent fog of bitter, caramelized cumin and decomposing mosses and herbs. This scent conjures imagery from a 17th-century oil painting steeped in alchemical knowledge and symbolism and ancient traditions mingling science, philosophy, faith, and artistic spirit: “A shadowy scenario unfolds as a lone wax candle burns deep into the night. Various lenses and prisms refract the faint glow of the flickering flame to vaguely illuminate a crude, darkened laboratory, whereupon an oaken table, dusty flasks precariously balanced, bubble with a disquieting phosphorescence and engines of distillation chug and clank murkily nearby. Brittle scrolls and yellowed manuscripts, embellished with colorful emblems and arcane symbols scribbled hastily in the margins, are scattered haphazardly on a dirt floor to further illustrate this scene of curious chemical phenomena and scholarly chaos. A wan, stocking-footed man with a funny cap alternately pores pensively over massive tomes or perhaps pumps a small bellow to encourage a sullen, smoking fire, while lost in analytical reverie.” Yes, this is what Grimoire smells like. Yes, I did just quote a passage from The Art of the Occult, a book that I wrote. Is that tacky to mention? Maybe. Is it relevant? Entirely!
Loved the opening and thought I might be in for something akin to Fate Man by Amouage after that waft of cumin, and blasting of piney citrus, incense. The drydown is much more of an olibanum dominant affair though and my critisism....a little too much so. It's a bit linear for me but I have to say either the accord or most likely the olibanum used is of excellent quality, it really does shimmer with a silvery goodness and in lesser hands may not be a liable perfume (despite being fantastic material) but here it's sheperded to a much finer and more polished place than the usual crop of indy, incense perfumes. I like it, but I'd like it more if those spicy top notes stuck around a little longer and if it really put the boot in and cracked up to 11, I'd probably rave about this perfume and it's lovely olibanum centric themes.
