AEDES DE VENUSTAS

$171

In 2016’s GRENADILLE D’AFRIQUE, Alberto Morillas turns it into an arrestingly elegant olfactory sculpture. Run through from twigs to roots with aromatic, juniper-scented sap, the mythical African Blackwood tree is built around a “trunk” of Haitian vetiver. With its complex facets of wood, smoke, earth and flint, it is the vertical axis that draws together the fragrance’s vegetal, animal and mineral notes.At first breath, it’s hard to say if the perfume places you in dusk or dawn. Sparkling bergamot captures the last rays of the sun, while a purple haze of lavender and violet spill their powdery moonlight on the savannah grasslands. Further in its life, vanilla, turned into combustible resin by a lash of ambery cistus labdanum, exudes a balsamic warmth. Bleached wood, skin-soft bark and sun-heated stone release the day’s heat into the ink-black night, cooled off by a breeze of musk.