Mantes-la-Jolie is almost shockingly minty at first: it's an ultra-refreshing wintergreen blast of eucalyptus-mint-basil-bergamot that you might expect to come across as artificial or toothpaste-y, but it's amazingly natural. That lovely, invigorating opening quickly develops through the other notes in a tidy sequence, growing sweeter with green currant leaf and warm fig before the cedar wood creeps in and it starts to mellow into mild notes of mate, honeyed jasmine, and faint ginger that somehow combine to create the effect of a complex but subtle woody vanilla. Normally, both mint and vanilla would be a "no" from me but the presentation of every facet of this scent is so original and interesting, it's got me hooked. The initial notes do fade fast, but the delicious drydown sticks around at a low level for a solid 6+ hours, periodically surprising me with how good I smell. I love this one, a truly unique aromatic take on a green fig. Pricey, but I appreciate that Astier de Villatte gives you varied size options at different price points: 100, 30, and 10 ml. I'd like to try more from this house.

Aside from the ones named for specific collaborators (Another 13, the Colette ones), this is the only Le Labo fragrance I know of that isn’t named for an ingredient, which makes sense given how abstract it feels—to me, anyway. Baie 19 implies a bay of water, and it does make me think of the still, reflective surface of a cold mountain lake, with rocky, mossy shores under a silver sky. Rather than the moist earth of petrichor, it calls up damp stones. I get mineral, medicinal juniper and a combination of metallic, ozonic, herbal, green, and synthetic, almost latex-ish notes, and then some earthy musk as it settles down. It’s the natural world in vivid detail, but as if you were seeing it in VR, or a dream. It’s disorienting and magnetic, very subtle but continuously surprising—“What am I smelling?” I keep asking myself. I imagine this being what a mirror would smell like if it had a smell—the scent seems to arrive in my nose as if it was getting refracted through a lens, bent or inverted, like rays of light. Unlike a lot of other “molecular”-type skin scents, this one also lasts, though it doesn’t really project. I’m deeply intrigued by it. Maybe my favourite Le Labo fragrance? Certainly one of their weirdest. Expensive, of course, and it also suggests a mood I might only occasionally want to inhabit, so not an easy purchase. Incidentally, the first time I tried this, I also sampled Aesop’s Eremia, Tacit, and Ouranon, which I think aim for similar territory: understated, meditative, herbal, earthy, abstracted…and overpriced. Those three are all interesting and cool in their own ways, but if I was going to spend over $200 on 50ml, I think Baie 19 delivers more.

@IamdrinkingBeer oh god, I guess you're right. How embarrassing! 😅 Though, imo, they should have called it "Genévrier," then! This definitely doesn't evoke "berries" in general.

Clue! The excitement around this brand is contagious, and for good reason: all of their scents are so original and interesting, and their sensibility is so distinctive: a little bit cute, a little bit retro, tasteful and highly considered yet unpretentious, experimental but accessible, and surprising above all. I feel like the essence of Clue is a thought bubble with an exclamation point and question mark in it (an interrobang??). I love the Harry Nilsson soundtrack for the 1971 film that inspired this fragrance and the description sounded like such a perfect summer scent: “A cup of jasmine tea brewed with ocean water.” And it smells exactly like that! The seawater accord is incredible: salty, sandy, and briny in a way that most fresh, “aquatic” perfumes do not accurately nail at all. The jasmine tea is dreamy and mysterious. It gets washed out by the ocean notes in a sort of watercolour way, but it retains a feeling of seriousness that fits with the evocation of the deep sea. On that basis, the brand’s line “a cartoon drawing of jasmine tea” feels a tiny bit misleading, since I feel like there’s something quite wild and poetic about The Point, it doesn’t feel as “cute” as Warm Bulb (which does evoke a comic-strip drawing of a light bulb for me). The floral note of the jasmine combines with the honeyed patchouli of the heart notes to suggest a vintage flavour, a tinge of hippie vibes that fit with the 70s aesthetic of the source material, but in an abstract way that doesn’t go overboard into beads-and-fringes paisley head-shop territory. The mineral top notes and seaweedy ambergris in the base also inflect the patchouli in a surprisingly masculine way: at times, The Point almost seems to be giving whiffs of fougère, though the fragrance drifts and eddies like the tide going out, it’s very nonlinear. I love the sandy drydown—it really smells like wet sand, and I feel like I’m picking up sun-bleached driftwood in there, too. Unlike some other commenters, I’m not finding that it lasts very long (only about 3 hours), though this might be an issue with dabbing from a sample vial. In my fairly limited experience with tea scents, they present a light screen that benefits from generous application. I’m super tempted to get a full bottle of this just to enjoy for the remainder of summer, though I also think I’m really going to want a FB of Warm Bulb when the autumn rolls around, so I might hold off for that.

This might be a little esoteric, but bear with me: Papyrus Moléculaire by Maison Crivelli reminds me of the midcentury furniture of Cuban-Mexican designer Clara Porset, specifically her butaque chairs. Porset’s designs embraced both industrial and handcrafted production and, like the Bauhaus teachers and peers she studied with, she aimed at elevating living standards and bringing modernist aesthetics to the masses—while also preserving Cuban and Mexican folk art traditions. Her celebrated butaque chairs were based on a colonial-era hybrid of Spanish X-frame seating and pre-Columbian ritual stools. Their ergonomic forms are crafted from polished wood and materials like wicker, leather, or woven agave reeds. When I read that this woody, tobacco-accented perfume was inspired by Thibaud Crivelli’s first encounter with papyrus root powder among a group of tattooed women smoking cigarillos, I immediately imagined Clara Porset’s wood-and-woven chairs being crafted by women smoking Cuban cigars. The fragrance is deep, warm, and smooth, but with bright and peppery vegetal and mineral top notes. I find that papyrus comes across a bit like vetiver: grassy, both green and dry, it feels grounded and a little serious, but the addition of coriander and elemi resin makes this fragrance zing with citric greenness. Like Porset’s designs, this scent is like modernist aesthetics encountering the rootedness of natural materials and craft traditions.

I initially noticed this fragrance being touted as a more interesting alternative to Le Labo’s Santal 33, and I’ll say that they’re very similar, but Santal is heavier and more leather-ish, creamier and more enveloping, while this one is fresher and more lively. I tried them at the same time and Santal’s luxurious soft-focus felt almost flat, dull even, compared to the witty crackle of Papyrus Moléculaire, which rings out as bright and clear as a laugh. It’s an incredibly well-balanced fragrance, delicious and satisfying, totally unisex, that I think could be worn in any season for almost any occasion. I burned through my sample vial of this in record time and promptly bought a full bottle.

CDG 2 was a major gateway scent for me—it was one of the first perfumes I encountered that really blew me away, and I continue to find it endlessly mysterious and intriguing. CDG 2 was formulated in 1999 by Mark Buxton, the nose wizard behind the debut CDG eau de parfum and many iconic scents for CDG and other houses, including Le Labo’s Vetiver 46 (and, recently, for new niche Hong Kong brand Oddity). Inspired by the art of calligraphy, CDG 2 is a complex chypre variant with a signature ink note which, to me, smells like a glossy magazine—specifically, the kind of thick fashion mag that has different perfume samples nestled in the pages. Lauded as a highly experimental perfume when it was launched, often described as “futuristic,” I think its effect derives from the interplay between the citrus, tea, herb, and spice elements, the bright, almost chemical-metallic aldehydes, the ink accord, and the floral notes, which come to the fore after a few minutes, melding gently with the soft spices and becoming more powdery without resolving into a conventional “floweriness.” It’s almost as though this perfume directly activates the nasal pathways associated with the pleasure of smelling flowers. It smells both scientific—I vividly think of a lab coat—and entirely organic at the same time. It’s highly androgynous and initially struck me as totally unisex, though over time I’ve come to feel that there’s a subtle, cyborg femininity encoded in its florals—still wearable by anyone. This scent shares some of the late-90s posthuman optimism of Björk’s Homogenic, a mood that I feel quite nostalgic towards, though I’d also say it’s perfectly timeless, invulnerable to trends. It’s a fragrance that I would be thrilled to smell at any time, though I don’t necessarily want to wear it for all occasions—it’s a bit chilly and bittersweet, even metallic or alien, but in a sublime way. Also, the bottle is perfect: the scratched numeral, the palm-size metal shape, the off-center cap? It precisely captures the fragrance’s combination of radical originality and inhuman grace

I’ve been fantasizing about the perfect green scent, something with the biting, vegetable freshness of crushed stems—not fruity or light, but sharp and bitter, like roots and earth. Eris’ Green Spell delivers with a blast of galbanum and hyper-realistic tomato-leaf that feels like the deepest part of an Henri Rousseau jungle painting: it makes you think of plant life in terms of blades and spears. In this dream of greenery, there’s no sunlight or even moonlight, just dense thickets of spiky, dewy foliage taller than you are. Mandarin and black currant are listed as top notes but the citrus and berry tartness seem don't feel front-loaded to me, they sneak in sideways, along with the nice addition of fig leaf, which warms up the mix a bit, though there’s also violet leaf cooling it back down. This is like an underworld version of Philosykos—a shadowy, almost poison green rather than the angelic airiness of the Diptyque one. People seem to complain about its longevity, but I haven’t found any super-green scent that lasts very long, so I think it just comes with the territory. This one dries down to a spicy, slightly musky and grassy vetiver that lasts for quite a while, though really just as a skin scent. I like this perfume a LOT.

I know Debaser is popular, and a friend recommended it a while back, knowing that I like fig-leaf scents. I sniffed it in a shop and didn’t love my first impression but now that I’ve had the chance to wear my sample a few times, I’m warming up to it. I find the listed notes a little misleading: it’s supposed to have green stems, pear, and bergamot up top, but all I notice is the zesty green and then the fig leaf and coconut milk right away, which are supposed to be the middle notes, along with iris (which I don’t really pick up). Normally, coconut is a note that would turn me off, but this one is interesting: it doesn’t feel artificial or sunscreen-ish, it comes across very clean and cool and creamy. It’s very much coconut milk rather than coconut, and I do like it in this fragrance, somewhat to my surprise—it blends really well with the other notes. Under all that, the base notes of “precious woods,” tonka bean, and moss come through heavily. Right off the bat, this perfume is intensely woody, and after the top and middle notes fade, you’re left with a clean, earthy, spicy wood in which Iso E Super really predominates. Overall, the combination of fresh greens, spicy fig leaf, and woody finish make this an almost ideal “basic,” modern unisex/masc-leaning fragrance, and as somebody who likes Philosykos but wishes it was a bit more dense, not so ephemerally light, this is a satisfying and extremely wearable scent. On the downside, some might find it too strong (my gf, for example, says it’s off-putting on first application), and after the dimensionality of the top and middle notes dries down, the woody base can feel synthetic and a bit predictable. Feels good to wear in the summertime but I could see the coconut note not working in cooler seasons.

Very straightforwardly woody. Sharp cypress smoke, hints of “cologne-y” vetiver and oakmoss. Nice, but (on first impression, anyway) maybe a bit one-dimensional. I expected something a bit more interesting from Aesop, frankly. It opens up a bit more on the skin but sillage and longevity are both pretty weak. I couldn’t smell it anymore after a barely two hours. It's not bad, but there are more interesting scents out there with this profile: CDG Monocle Hinoki, for instance, is very similar and more satisfying, imo.

I’ve been looking for a summery, citrus-forward scent that’s doesn’t smell like dish detergent or a spa product, and Burst delivers in a big way. For starters, the top note is Yuzu, so it’s citrus without being immediately recognizable as the more familiar orange, lemon, or lime, and it’s joined by notes of “Rhubarb, Apple Skin, White Chalk, Pencil Shavings, and Musk.” Now, rhubarb is a pretty subtle scent to start with, and I find that here it blends pretty seamlessly with the yuzu, apple, and the woody notes to make something that’s extremely pleasing: fresh and fruity, both juicy and dry (somehow!), almost-candy sweet without being cloying (partly because it’s also zesty and a bit sour). The musk underneath makes me think of warm, sun-kissed skin, almost like sunblock—and it actually smells great along with the SPF I put on along with it. One of the listed characteristics is “squinting into the sun,” which feels 100% accurate to me: this is one of the sunniest fragrances I’ve ever smelled. It immediately made one think of the sunburst cover art of Boredoms’ Vision Creation Newsun, and the ecstatic, joyous, percussive rush of that music totally fits the vibe of this smell. It’s uninhibited fun and satisfying complexity at the same time. It’s like eating a dripping peach over the sink in July while preparing a really impressive dessert with the rest of the basket. It feels like going to the summer wedding of your oldest friend and it’s a wild party. Longevity is pretty good, I think! I stopped smelling it after a few hours but my gf could still detect it in the evening.