The opening is a beautiful almost realistic crystalline camphor. Not intense or overpowering, but more like a medicinal shampoo. There's a faint spicy and warmth from pepper, and a not too sweet, but juicy fruitiness.
Drying down the camphor softens and mixed with the musc becomes almost like a perfumed talc.
A little gentle spicy remains but hard to identify if that's from the incense, patchouli, or resins.
A really lovely scent, and worth a sample at least !
Archives 69 is an interesting scent from ELDO, one that I’m not entirely sure I enjoy. It combines the worlds of intense warm spices with aromatic green florals in a way which feels slightly off-putting in my opinion. It features an overdose of pink pepper and fry paprika which I think is the element I can’t get past. A thick, smoky incense is combined with this overwhelmingly green and herbal note of camphor which is very unusual. From here there’s elements of orchid and plum but they’re very subtle. Overall this is not the sort of fragrance I enjoy, I’m simply not a fan of the notes utilised here but I won’t deny it feels well made.
My friend's kid sniffed my arm and shouted "pizza!". I like the perfume, but I'll never ever be able to wear it again without thinking about that.
The more I sample ELDO fragrances, the more I come to realise that, although the house projects an image of producing work that is adventurous and edgy, their scents are actually really rather conventional, but given a mild twist (I haven't, to be fair, sampled the notorious Secretions Magnifique).
This image seems to infect reviews of their perfumes too. Case in point: Archives 69. There are so many that class this as being unwearable, whereas I smell this and think, that's really nice. And then I think, do I just have a tolerance for really weird shit?
Whatever. This is peppery camphor at the outset, and it settles down to a frankincense- floral core that at times smells oddly like rose, though the notes list it as vanilla orchid. Not that I would have the slightest idea what that particular flower smells like, but it smells like a rose, apparently. There are sweet fruity notes too, with the prune especially evident, along with the odd whiff of orange. Finally, there's an animalic, musky patchouli to earth it all down and stop it being a disparate, unconnected mixture of scents. By the end, it settles to a mild, powdery incense.
I like this a lot, and it's my favourite ELDO creation by a very long way. It still doesn't strike me as being particularly experimental, and this may in part be because it's supremely well blended. Kudos to Christine Nagel for managing to pull that off. Possibly a full bottle purchase is in the offing, once my little sample is finished.