Maker of Soaps and Shaver of Men
Cooperstown, NY, USA
(This post was last modified: 06-14-2015, 11:28 PM by Barrister_N_Mann.)
Citrus is weird. As a perfumer, you can make it sweet and syrupy, sharp and acidic, peppery, dry, or you can bury it completely and use it only as a complimentary note. It’s probably the most versatile category of fragrance notes in existence. It can take a flat, boring, heavy fragrance and give it depth and charm and light, turn sonorous dirges into trumpeting symphonies, make quietly rough skin scents into radiant, captivatingly mellifluous things.
But, for all of the uses for citrus I’ve seen, I don’t think any of them can hold a candle to Orange Sanguine.
It is, to put it simply, a stroke of genius. Orange Sanguine, which is now probably the most famous of the highly inventive Atelier line, doesn’t really smell of citrus in any conventional sense. Despite an impressive note list of blood orange, bitter orange, geranium, tonka, etc., it doesn’t really smell like a citrus perfume at all, at least in their normal state of gleaming, acidic sharpness.
Instead, Orange Sanguine smells like orange pith. Really.
So what’s orange pith? Pith is the white, fuzzy stuff that connects the inner tissue of the peel/rind to the outer surface of the flesh of the fruit itself. It’s the weird stuff that you’re always trying to scrape off the outside of a peeled orange because it’s bitter and harsh and floral and you want to get to the deliciously sweet juiciness beneath. If you ever stop to smell it, it has a delicate, citrusy floral character, like peonies soaked in freshly-squeezed orange juice. It’s one of those marvelously beautiful scents that everyone recognizes and no one notices.
Orange Sanguine smells like that. It’s delicate and floral and refreshing and elegant. Citrusy without being sweet, floral without being overbearing, clean, light, impossible to over-apply, and truly a marvel. It’s one of the greatest examples of the “transparent” school of perfumery, a technique pioneered by Jean-Claude Ellena and Bertrand Duchaufour, where the entire perfume gives one entire impression, but smelling it closely will allow you to isolate the various notes that comprise the idea. Think of it like a perfume mosaic: if you look closely, you can inspect the individual tiles, but the farther away you get from the picture, the more complete it becomes. *Orange Sanguine* completely ignores the idea of a traditional citrus perfume and instead creates a brilliant, airy, impossibly beautiful thing that is so much more than the sum of its parts that it might very well violate some mathematical law. I’ve ordered a bottle of it for the Summer. I suggest that you do the same.
But, for all of the uses for citrus I’ve seen, I don’t think any of them can hold a candle to Orange Sanguine.
It is, to put it simply, a stroke of genius. Orange Sanguine, which is now probably the most famous of the highly inventive Atelier line, doesn’t really smell of citrus in any conventional sense. Despite an impressive note list of blood orange, bitter orange, geranium, tonka, etc., it doesn’t really smell like a citrus perfume at all, at least in their normal state of gleaming, acidic sharpness.
Instead, Orange Sanguine smells like orange pith. Really.
So what’s orange pith? Pith is the white, fuzzy stuff that connects the inner tissue of the peel/rind to the outer surface of the flesh of the fruit itself. It’s the weird stuff that you’re always trying to scrape off the outside of a peeled orange because it’s bitter and harsh and floral and you want to get to the deliciously sweet juiciness beneath. If you ever stop to smell it, it has a delicate, citrusy floral character, like peonies soaked in freshly-squeezed orange juice. It’s one of those marvelously beautiful scents that everyone recognizes and no one notices.
Orange Sanguine smells like that. It’s delicate and floral and refreshing and elegant. Citrusy without being sweet, floral without being overbearing, clean, light, impossible to over-apply, and truly a marvel. It’s one of the greatest examples of the “transparent” school of perfumery, a technique pioneered by Jean-Claude Ellena and Bertrand Duchaufour, where the entire perfume gives one entire impression, but smelling it closely will allow you to isolate the various notes that comprise the idea. Think of it like a perfume mosaic: if you look closely, you can inspect the individual tiles, but the farther away you get from the picture, the more complete it becomes. *Orange Sanguine* completely ignores the idea of a traditional citrus perfume and instead creates a brilliant, airy, impossibly beautiful thing that is so much more than the sum of its parts that it might very well violate some mathematical law. I’ve ordered a bottle of it for the Summer. I suggest that you do the same.
“You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.” – Marcus Aurelius
Fine grooming products at Barrister and Mann.
www.barristerandmann.com
Fine grooming products at Barrister and Mann.
www.barristerandmann.com
Glad you liked it, though!
