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.
Thomas Dunckley breathes in a dense, stifling forest there, run through with pine and an icy mentholated nuance; he judges it beautiful and unusual, never bleak.
Olfastory’s review
The Candy Perfume Boy — Thomas Dunckley, 13 March 2017
Favourable with a reservation. He wonders at first whether the suggestion of the name is not doing some of the work, before granting Tenebrae a stifling, almost overwhelming quality. The smell is for him that of a breath drawn under thick plant cover, in air heavy with smoky, sweet incense, with pine.
The surprise comes from the cold: this air is not hot, it is icy, with a mentholated nuance he would find refreshing if it made itself less present. His conclusion stays favourable — brooding and enveloping, never bleak or oppressive, and a fine reading of darkness, of an uncommon kind.