Méchant Loup

L’Artisan Parfumeur released Méchant Loup in 1997, as an eau de toilette. Bertrand Duchaufour carries it, seven years before Timbuktu and nine before Dzongkha for the same house.

A tale taken from behind

The house’s story starts with Little Red Riding Hood’s flight. She crushes twigs and dry autumn leaves, and the air fills with dry earth, damp wood, sap hardened on bark.

The wolf, for his part, charms rather than frightens: the house lends him a bittersweet accord into which resin, roasted hazelnuts, praline and licorice enter. The title announces a threat the juice does not carry.

The hazel tree, and not the hazelnut

The house sums up its own work in one sentence: an abstract portrait of the hazel tree, an accord of forest smells softened by a gourmand note. The tree is the subject, not the confectionery.

Olfactorum, a French blog, checks it on the skin and reports an earthy hazelnut, wet leaves, a myrrh and a guaiac wood that arrive after a few minutes. The blog hears undergrowth there rather than dessert.

What the house did not keep

Méchant Loup belongs to La Collection, the permanent range, and sells in fifty and one hundred millilitres. The house files it among its perfumes for him, while its resellers give it as unisex.