Ambre Russe

Marc-Antoine Corticchiato is an unconventional perfumer who first honed his skills in research laboratories before venturing into the art of combining precious molecules into exquisite scents. He founded his own perfume house, Parfum d'Empire, in order to compose fragrances paying tribute to his passion for history, which he did not fail to do with his very first fragrance in 2003, Eau de Gloire. In 2005, he presented two extraordinary fragrances, among them Ambre Russe, a fragrance with the taste of Russia that leaves no one indifferent.

Ambre Russe or the reminiscences of Marc-Antoine Corticchiato

Every fragrance from the house Parfum d'Empire is composed by a passionate perfumer and chemist: Marc-Antoine Corticchiato. Having come to perfumery through his love of nature and his studies in chemistry, the man is not one to make the slightest commercial concession when it comes to fragrance composition. Marc-Antoine Corticchiato lets himself be guided by his desires, his memories and his passion for historic events and places, as he had already shown with Eau de Gloire and Eau Suave.

For Ambre Russe, the perfumer wanted to depict his dreamed-of Russia, the Russia of the tsars and its festivities as sumptuous as they were decadent, the Russia that vibrates beneath the leather of boots and that fades away in wisps of incense. A Russia that Marc-Antoine Corticchiato wanted to render with amber as the star note, as if to better project himself back into his childhood in Morocco, where his parents once hosted dizzying evenings amid smoke and champagne.

I wanted amber. For me, it is the Russia of the tsars and their lavish festivities before the decline, which would be terrible. I discovered that it was in fact Morocco that had inspired this in me: my father was mad about parties, my parents hosted many of them, and the decline was indeed going to be terrible. Marc-Antoine Corticchiato for Ambre Russe, Flair Flair.

A journey through the lands of the vanished Tsars, or the wisps of smoke of Ambre Russe

Marc-Antoine Corticchiato had made one choice above all others for his composition of Ambre Russe: amber, and amber alone. Ambergris, that animalic amber that enchants and bewitches, that amber which may one day disappear as sperm whales grow ever rarer and ambergris becomes an almost unattainable marine treasure, a treasure once reserved for tsars.

Then we enter into the amber, which will be the pillar of the fragrance. Natural amber, derived from the sperm whale — I should note that the more living sperm whales there are, the more ambergris there is — was at the time reserved for tsars and the great figures of the world. Marc-Antoine Corticchiato for Ambre Russe.

Thus, with this supernatural amber, Marc-Antoine Corticchiato allows himself to be carried along by festive memories, first sweeping us into the alcoholic vapors of vodka and champagne. Ambre Russe then shifts into the searing closeness of spicy notes and black tea, before better sliding into the violence of animalic and leathery depths, leaving behind a lingering taste of deep sensuality as the celebration fades.

I wanted to thank you. Thanks to you, before I die, I will have found the scent of Russia again, a devotee of Ambre Russe told Marc-Antoine Corticchiato.