Poivre Electrique
Atelier Cologne (2016)

The name is immediately materialised in the opening blast: a pepper notes is infused with brightness. The pepper is not heavy and it is neither extremely strong nor very harsh. It is brightened up by a blast of a nigh-aldehydic flash and a near-Iso-Super-E touch such as to conjure up a quasi-electric feel in the air. Cleverly done.

The drydown continues with a period of floral hints, mainly rose, but is very weak and pushed aside by an incense note that is growing quite quickly. It is, nonetheless, a restrained incense that's is also on the brighter and lighter side, and lacks any heavy or ceremonious character.

The base is bases on wood notes, that remain nonspecific mostly except the occasions breakthrough of blips of cedar. The incense takes on tints of myrrh at times towards the end.

I get weak sillage, adequate projection and five hours of longevity on my skin.

This scent for warmer autumn days is and incense-centric composition all right, but an unusually unobtrusive incense and myrrh is applied in it, and it is one of the rare incense fragrances well suited for the office. The concept of the top notes is not without originality, but the rest is a bit predictable and at times rather generic. The performance is not very good, even with liberal application.
Overall 2.75/5

The spicy black pepper opening of this is great–it's kept from being astringent from the fruitiness of the pink pepper, dry cedar, sweet resins, and a very soft rose halo in the background. It's self-assured but friendly, stylish but uncomplicated. I find most Atelier Cologne fragrances screechy and harsh; this mostly avoids that, but the AC base loves to shout “I'm a perfume!,” and it gets its moment after we find ourselves in the heart. But overall, it's balanced and rounded in all the ways it should be. It's very easy to wear, and fairly androgynous–it could skew femme or butch as you wanted it to.

But, with all that positivity, it's certainly not novel. I'd much rather wear Comme des Garçons' Blackpepper or Play Black, similar in their peppery top notes but deeper and a little darker in their bases. I recall thinking Blackpepper didn't last long enough, but whatever it was, it's surely longer than the hour or two I get out of Poivre Electrique. And then there's the price. $130 for 30ml? $250 for 100? Sure, you can find it on Fragrancenet and save a bit, but why pay more for fast fashion when you could buy the actual designer outfit?

After having tried the entire Collection Orient of Atelier Cologne, all of them miss the mark except for Philtre Ceylan. Poivre Electrique is built around a big dose of spicy black pepper, tempered with sparkling pink paper over a base that smells of mostly cedar to me. Any resins, if present, are very subdued. The focus is on the peppers, which are well done, but overall the composition lacks in dimension and depth. It reminds me of Lalique White and Honour Man. It is more full bodied and substantial than Lalique White, but the latter is more nuanced and elegant, though very fleeting; Honour Man is more complex than Poivre Electrique by incorporation of an airy incense note and a deeper and more engaging development and dry down.

I find Poivre Electrique to have good sillage initially but it calms down significantly after an hour or so, and duration is average on skin. I prefer Honour Man for its relative richness, while Lalique White, available at a fraction of the cost of Poivre Electrique, is a better budget option. Finally, Poivre Electrique comes nowhere near Piper Nigrum or Noir Epices, while Creed's Royal Oud is a much better exploration of pink pepper with cedar.

2.5/5

The first thing that came to mind was "Oud". The sweet incense, sandalwood and pepper notes achieves it's goal to make this a beautiful fragrance. The rose doesn't hurt either. 7.5/10

While it is peppery, I don't find it unpleasant because of the woody base and clean, green notes in the top.

Average projection and very good longevity.

Sampled from the AC sample pack
Poivre Electrique: I have stumbled upon the bad-boy in the Atelier line up! an opening olfactory assault certainly comprising pepper, lifted by what seems like heavy aldehydes slightly sweetened by a peppery nose-numbing pimento type note. I've never been pepper-sprayed to the face but I imagine I can now empathise with such misadventurous soles. If I make Poivre Eletrique sound like a nightmare I am misleading you - I quite enjoyed the assault. Opening and early stages reminded me of more avante-garde concept scents like Nu_Be sulphur and murcury combined with the pepper of L'artisans Poivre Piquant. The early dry down becomes quite urban and dusty - like a dank underground station under renovation with cement dust and exposed pipes. reading the note list this will be the incense i.e. frankinsence which has a similar austere minimalist appeal to that in the armani privee Bois d'Encens. I wore a tiny splash at the gym and the scent did well with the tubular steel, vulcanised rubber and dusty treadmill belts.One for the cool urban crowd, warehouse parties, lower-Eastsiders etc. Those not trying to fit-in (perhaps ironically trying too hard not to conform?) Further drydown is slow and steady, maybe revealing a fuzzy musky rose abstract leather. Overall - very off-beat scent. I feel it could be Ateliers 'sec-maq' - designed to shock more than sell. It could easily have been a Nu_Be created by Antoine Lie named Xenon, but then that house seems to have folded: so it may survive here and develop a cult-following. Not all that versatile or conventionally 'nice', and far removed from the Atelier theme, nonetheless for intrigue and bolshie-ness a subjective 77/100