Let There Be Scent: The Best Perfumes From the Past Year

Style.com/Arabia’s award-winning perfume critic, Dr. Luca Turin, is back to rate the fragrance industry’s increasingly expanding perfume offerings. As we launch into another year of extraordinarily descriptive reviews, we look back at Dr. Turin’s best-rated scents from 2014.

MAAI

by BOGUE 4 stars I cannot overstate the joy that smelling something like this provides. It’s like sitting in the front row at the Vienna Philharmonic after listening to two months’ worth of ringtones: the sound is so glorious you don’t care if they play Die Fledermaus. And Maai is far better than that even, a big-boned, animalic woody chypre seemingly laden with every magnificent material we knew and loved before the End of History set in: musks, oakmoss, eucalyptus, cedar, bergamot, patchouli, sandalwood, jasmine, ylang, rose, tuberose, etc. Read the full review here.

CUIR CANNAGE

by CHRISTIAN DIOR 4 stars Without introducing any novelty, Cuir Cannage hits a spot exactly midway between richness and clarity, luxury and chic, bitter and sweet. The drydown veers slightly towards amber, but remains impressively faithful to the leather structure. Superbly smooth work from a master of the classical form. Read the full review here.

NARCISO

by NARCISO RODRIGUEZ 4.5 stars There is a trick of scale to Narciso, which I believe has not been achieved before. The first ten minutes are full of references to well-worn clichés used in recent perfumes, such as the familiar pastel palette of vanilla, mimosa, and floral-soapy notes. All of this feels winsome and soothing, until you realise that what you thought was a cutesy-pie doll is in fact a creature fifty stories tall kicking buildings out of the way with its buff-colored patent-leather Mary-Janes. Read the full review here.

VENEZIA GIARDINI SEGRETI


by PROFUMO 4 stars Up top, VGS is a huge, delightful jasmine reminiscent of the sambac variety, green-fresh, almost lemony. It then settles to a very pleasant, more straightforward celery-jasmine note. About half-way into the drydown, however, something strange happens and the jasmine morphs into a very convincing gardenia. Read the full review here.

KORRIGAN

by LUBIN 5 stars Korrigan is the fourth fragrance that I feel must come from some landlocked mountain kingdom, by turns pious and festive; a Shangri-La where the Council of State is by tradition made up of French perfumers in their early fifties: Mark Buxton, Bertrand Duchaufour, Annick Ménardo and now Thomas Fontaine. Read the full review here.

SECRET DE ROCHAS OUD MYSTÈRE


by ROCHAS 4 stars I have not smelled the unmodified Secret de Rochas [without oud] fragrance, and I disapprove on principle of these usually perfunctory nods to the Middle Eastern market. But the French ability to take an idea from afar and give it an elegant, airy spin should never be underestimated. The modern trend of western “orientalist” fragrances falls into two categories: the hippy-jossticks variety which usually adds very little to what can be found everywhere, better and cheaper, in the Arab world; and this, the costume-ball style where the intent is not imitation but quotation. Read the full review here.

ESSENCE NO.4: OUD


by ELIE SAAB 4 stars This Elie Saab is an example of a modern oud. I have not been overly impressed with Elie Saab’s mass market fragrances so far, but this Essences series is something altogether different and laudable: a niche line that actually lives up to its promise of quality. Composed by the excellent Francis Kurkdjian, this oud is very close in spirit to Armani’s Bois d’Encens (2004), with a tremendous incense and elemi uplift balancing out the oud’s earthbound tendencies, and some very discreet woody-floral notes in there to faintly remind one of Lutens’s original Bois de Violette (1992). Read the full review here.

LAMPBLACK

by BRUNO FAZZOLARI 4 stars Bruno Fazzolari is a visual artist who has been doing perfumes for a mere four years. I assume his PR is telling the truth and he composes his own fragrances. They are, in truth, very professional. Lampblack is my favorite, an elegant smoky-fresh composition I’ve been wearing most days for weeks now. It uses nagarmotha, also known as cypriol, a smoky material which successfully steers a narrow course between the dangerous shoals of bacon and leather, and manages to suggest smoke rising to heaven rather than the tar left behind. Read the full review here.

FAN DI FENDI LEATHER ESSENCE

by FENDI 4 stars There is a confident, eclectic complexity to this fragrance that in my mind embodies a specifically Italian chic, all smiles, pliant softness and welcoming warmth. My reference in this genre is Lubin’s Korrigan, which manages to be at once austere and appetizing, somewhere between burning incense and warm gingerbread. Fan di Fendi is less poetic, more staid, but still a very nice fragrance. Read the full review here.

EMBLEM


by MONTBLANC 4 stars This is a masculine fragrance, of course, and it comes in a beautiful black bottle that looks like the cap of a titanic fountain pen. On a guy, it would probably be a little too Porsche Design “black-is-the-new-black” for my taste. But it will work great on a woman, as a chaser for the nauseating meringues everyone else is doing, and to advertise an unrepentantly dry-eyed disposition. Read the full review here.

FLORABOTANICA

by BALENCIAGA 4 stars Florabotanica manages to turn frumpy and cheap into frivolous and charming by doing to the floral what Philippe Starck did to upholstery when he took a Louis XVI chair, cast it as one piece of Lucite, and called it Ghost: bring forth something not particularly comfortable, but unquestionably witty and stylish. Read the full review here.

JOUR D’HERMÈS ABSOLU


by HERMÈS 4 stars Elléna has not slacked off since his initial discovery, and Jour d’Hermès Absolu is perhaps his best statement to date of this particular style. It starts off with a blast of grapefruit on an abstract apricot background, reminiscent of Guerlain’s Pamplelune but less blinding. When the citrus fades, Jour d’Hermès Absolu settles into a back-lit, stained-glass version of what classic woody fragrances like Miss Balmain or Azurée [Lauder] did in oils. Read the full review here.

LA PETITE ROBE NOIR COUTURE


by GUERLAIN 4.5 stars In this respect, LPRN Couture is a stunning success. Up close it is a strange cacophony of fruity, spicy, and floral notes, as if Nahéma (1979) had collided with Coco Mademoiselle. Step back—or better still—walk out of the room and come back after a few minutes, and you will immediately understand that this stage makeup was never intended for close-ups, but works best when you forget it and suddenly wonder, “What’s that great smell?” Read the full review here.

68


by GUERLAIN 4 stars The drydown carries on essentially until your next shower, in a soft, balsamic-salicylate accord which does not even need to be original: the mere fact that it is there and smells good is more than enough. Guerlain’s revenge on shallow, front-loaded, chemical perfumery is complete and, for once, served warm. Read the full review here.