man with falcon, originally uploaded by dirkcush.

Strongly medicinal and camphoreous at first, so much that I fondly recall pharmacies and clinics from my childhood where I often visited as little bug-bitten girl to be treated with a cooling calamine lotion, ahhh.... Yet, what is at first an animalic-medicinal agarwood evolves into an elusive musk with raspberry undertones that are (not surprisingly) far more interesting and tasteful than Western mass produced oud interpretation, M7. It than develops some green undertones, reminiscent of spikenard and vetiver, but not quite. Smooth notes of rose appear, very subtle. Although it is not as agarwoody as I’d like it to be (being familiar with the raw materials), it surely radiates the exquisite natural luxury of agarwood, even though with the help of a few synthetics. The dry down of the oud from Oman is incensey, woody, musky, clean and masculine, very much like the smoke of a high quality sandalwood incense sticks.

, originally uploaded by ***•***•***.

smoke, originally uploaded by Silent Image.

Le Labo is a relatively new (2006) independent perfume house that commissions different perfumers to design their fragrances. I am not familiar with other scents from this line, nor do I know who is the nose behind this particular scent - but what I do know about about Le Labo’s perfumes is that they all bear names of building blocks followed by a number to indicate how many other building blocks went into the formula.

In the case of Vetiver 46, I can smell the other 45 ingredients far more than building block that gave its name. To be more precise, I smell labdanum and incense. The Le Labo website describes Vetiver 46 as the most masculine of the line, and themed around Haitian vetiver. I find this quite surprising, given the woody, incensey, at times almost smoky quality of the perfume that pervades most of its life on the skin.

Opening with labdanum, cistus oil, olibanum (AKA frankincense) and smoky notes of guiacwood and burning cedarwood, the scent gradually softens but remains rather linear and unchanging. Its aroma is rich, nevertheless; yet while I find the combination of notes appealing on its own, I find the persistence of the labdanum and oakmoss here to be leaving more to be desired.

However, I am quite certain that if the name hinted the promise of incense I would have not been disappointed, even if I found out at the end that there is an underlining mossy, musky quality to the perfume (which gives it its “masculine” nuance). Given that it is called Vetiver 46, I find it difficult to assess the scent based on its performance in an objective manner. If you are looking for a vetiver scent, you won't find it here. If incense is what your heart desires, look no further, it's here in a juice form. Not a joss stick as pictured, but the resins thrown on a hot charcoal in a censer.

While Villoresi’s Vetiver was quite far from being a single-note vetiver, and also, like Le Labo's, plays up the cistus notes - it still was able to derive certain qualities from vetiver (i.e.: the dryness, the astringent freshness) and come back to it in the end. This perfume from Le Labo is the most remotely related to the building block that is its namesake that I’ve smelled of the genre. If it was called Cistus 45 I couldn’t have found this more fitting as a name. The 46th ingredient, Vetiver, got lost in the smoke and was left behind.

" Dernier feux ... ", originally uploaded by dmviews.

Interesting opening, with a pronounced note of herbaceous lavender, lavandin and lavender concrete - painting a rather masculine atmosphere. Galbanum is also a apparent, though more coumarin-like than the sharp green I am accustomed to find in this interesting resinoid. The unusual, green-herbaceous-leathery notes of osmanthus absolute peek through from the heart and create a mysterious warmth, leading us to a cistus essential oil (it’s different than labdanum, a lot more pine-like). Neroli barely manage to surface in this environment of resinous thickness, but it does if you pay close attention. Notes of oakmoss emerge later with much warmth and sophistication. But for the most part what I smell all along is labdanum, lavender concrete (a lavender absolute pre-stage which creates a base note of lavender), and only the bearest hint of vetiver earthiness. My skin tends to feel at home around labdanum and amplify it, so you are more than welcome to take my assessment of the vetiver presence here with a grain of salt. On a second thought, usually my skin also amplifies vetiver, but it does not happen here. I can barely smell the vetiver and probably would have dismissed it completely if the scent had a different name!

Vetiver by Villoresi, much like his Patchouli (which smells like spikenard on me), does not smell too much like the note from which it borrowed its name. It is worth mentioning in this vetiver marathon for its originality and unique combination of notes. Yet if you are looking for a vetiver scent that will showcase the typical characteristics of vetiver, this will not be among the ones I’d recommend. As an interesting exercise in an ambery fougere this is a superb offering with impressive amounts of natural essences, more than the other scents from this house that I’ve tried.

Top notes: Lavender, Galbanum, Cumin,
Heart notes: Osmanthus, Cistus oil, Neroli
Base notes: Labdanum, Vetiver, Oakmoss, Lavender Concrete

For an entirely different fragrance pyramid and to read more reviews of this fragrance, visit Basenotes.