With Feu Patchouli, perfumer Bertrand Duchaufour and brand art director Mohamed Rebatchi, decided to completely reinvent the chypre structure by taking patchouli from where it usually lurks, in the basenotes, and inverting it, so that the patchouli commands center stage from top to bottom. This has the effect of infusing the entire scent with a dry but velvety darkness that sometimes reads as moss, sometimes as earth, but mostly as deeply-spiced woods.
This boozy, bittersweet earthiness is introduced by way of a real firecracker of an opening, black pepper clashing into citrus peel to create a molecular explosion that snaps the wearer to attention. Clove and cinnamon add flickers of intense heat, like the sparks from soldered metal, illuminating the darkness of the patchouli draped like black velvet over a wooden frame. A current of rum-like davana and caramel pulses underneath, adding a warmth and ‘fulness’ that is almost but not quite sweet. Brooding and mysterious, Feu Patchouli definitely leans quite masculine but can also be worn with aplomb by women who love dark, spicy chypres.
