Tenebrae joined L’Artisan Parfumeur’s Natura Fabularis collection in 2016, six imaginary gardens signed by Daphné Bugey. The Latin name says darkness, and the number that preceded it at launch gives the count of attempts. Incense, resin and sap make up a forest so dense that light barely gets through.
Three named materials, none of them tiered, and one with no entry in the reference list. The subject comes down to few words: a forest of incense.
Incense, resin, wood
The incense opens, resinous and smoky. The resin occupies the middle. Wood closes the fragrance: Neiman Marcus adds it to the other two materials where Now Smell This and Thomas Dunckley name the sap.
The sap stays in prose
The crystallised sap the house puts forward has no entry in the reference list, and nothing allows it to be folded into a neighbouring material. It stays described without being set down as a note.
What the critic hears there
Thomas Dunckley finds a smoky, sweet incense accompanied by pine, with a cold mentholated nuance. The house declares none of these: they count as a reading, never as a note.
What the label declares
Seventeen entries: denatured alcohol, fragrance, water, three ultraviolet filters, seven regulated allergens — linalool, limonene, geraniol, citronellol, farnesol, citral, benzyl benzoate — and four colourings, a blue, a violet, a yellow and a red. No substance banned in the European Union appears there.