Vanilla Smoke
Aftelier (2015)

Oh my God, forgive my French, but this is f&*%$g amazing. Finally, a vanilla scent advertized as smoky that is actually, you know, smoky. It smells like the inside of a soft, worn black leather jacket of a person who has been drenching themselves in Bvlgari Black and smoking Gitanes. There’s a brief hit of mandarin peel, but it doesn’t register with me beyond a momentary citrus lift.

The lapsang souchong note has been managed so that it is not the sledgehammer of smoke one experiences in Slumberhouse Jeke, yet its presence is much more assertive than in Bvlgari Black. The smoke is soft, rubbery, and sexy.

The vanilla is dry and woody, and plays second fiddle to the smoky lapsang souchong note. It is not creamy or foody in the slightest, and smells more like dry, sweet cigarette paper than something you’d eat. Its mellow linearity and almost austere feel makes me think about classifying it among fragrances I love to wear when I’m writing or working on a project – dry, smoky, unemotional scents that have an inner life of their own or lend themselves well to silence and introspection. These, for me, include Chanel Sycomore, Byredo M/ Mink, and By Kilian Pure Oud. All round, a fantastic smoky vanilla, and to my nose, it is in a different league to the more straightforward luxury vanillas like Tihota or even SDV.

I have been collecting vanilla perfumes and the challenge is to find fragrances that do something special with the smell of vanilla because it is so intoxicatingly easy to enjoy vanilla all by itself - but who wants to be just plain vanilla! Not Mandy Aftel. Vanilla Smoke has a couple kinds of vanilla, a resinous quality and also a few stutter steps and structural dodges that add thickness, movement and depth within the warm vanilla story. Some of the best parts to the Vanilla Smoke dance are: Lapsang Souchong tea for bitter depth and, Saffron for scintillating edges, and Siam Wood for a honeyed fixative resinous thickness to hold all the parts. Despite the name this is not a smokey vanilla but is a thick, interesting, resinous warmth that avoids sugary vanilla - thankful for that. Rated 7 of 10 stars, shorted only for how quickly it fades to a pleasant skin scent afterthought, which is the curse of purely natural ingredient perfume.

My main impression here is of smoked rubber, underpinned by a very natural vanilla, i.e. not cupcake-sweet. It's very sheer though, not overly acrid. And that's about it. I don't get any citrus, booze or spices. This is far more subtle than I expected, & about as elusive as smoke, with very low projection. It's barely detectable after three hours, despite having applied several sprays, & although it's still there after ten hours, by this time I'm thoroughly bored with it.
I'm fine with vanilla not being sugary-sweet, but I would have preferred much more richness & intensity here. Instead I find myself unmoved, & rather disappointed by this one.

Definitely a departure from most vanilla-dominant fragrances, Aftelier Perfumes' Vanilla Smoke, my first try from the house, combines a very dense vanilla (boozy, cake-like) with darker elements, which, while feeling like oud and incense, are likely the result of a heavy does of saffron absolute, mixed gently with woods, coumarin, and ambergris.

It's really a sumptuous vanilla rendered more challenging.

I analogize it slightly to Kerosene Blackmail, which isn't simply berries, vanilla, and amber, but rather when the amber is very resinous and oud is added, it becomes a dual reality of sweet and harsh, or sweet an acerbic, that has to be enjoyed thoroughly. It's not the instant relief of the blend that's the reward; it's the harmony of generally-opposing sides.

The case is the same with Vanilla Smoke, which, as its name suggests, pairs the sweetest note of them against something devoid of sweetness as imagined.

I won't go as far to say it's in my very favorite vanilla creations, as I still prefer the note in its slightly boozy rendition in Guerlain's Spiritueuse Double Vanille, which many seem to hail as their favorite, but what's done in Vanilla Smoke is surely more daring, if nothing else, than SDV.

It performs exceptionally for an EDP, feeling more like an extrait from the onset, but its pricing of $180 for 30ml gives me some pause, as, despite the exquisiteness of the juice, $6 per ml is steep for non-sampling prices, but it's understandable that in a smaller operation with smaller batches, the margins need to be higher and the markup is less, given the likely involvement in this case of authentic ingredients (well, maybe not the ambergris) of high quality.

Bravo to Mandy for this creation, as I look forward to trying a couple of her other EDPs of which I bought samples.

8 out of 10

'Vanilla' is a crossover note found in both natural and mainstream perfumery. But notes aren't necessarily materials. 'Vanilla' notes in contemporary dessert-style gourmands and orientals likely have as much actual vanilla in them as the 'vanilla snow' flavor at my local frozen yogurt joint does.

Synthetic vanilla materials have been around since the days of early modern perfumery when aromachemicals were created to replace natural materials. Chemistry was king and the scientists of the time sought to create cheaper, easily produced versions of rare and costly botanical and animalic materials. They focused on a few particular characteristics of natural materials, slimming down rich and nuanced materials to a few easily recognized traits. Then they turned up the volume.

Coumarin, heliotropin, nitro musks and ionones did the same for tonka, mimosa, deer musk grains and violet. The goal was mimicry, but the tactic was bait-and-switch or 'tromp la nez'. The nose becomes trained by what it is exposed to and vanillin, not vanilla, became the olfactory baseline. The unfortunate side-effect is that actual vanilla, viewed through this lens, becomes unrecognizable. Rather than seeming rich and nuanced it comes off as imprecise or murky because it isn't the comfort-food we expected it to be.

Most gourmand perfumes offers the same self-negating experience as elevator music: easy recognition followed by reflexively tuning them out. The volume of the perfumes might be hard to ignore, but their monotony makes them easy to screen out.

Vanilla Smoke is harder to ignore and much more interesting to consider closely. It is the antithesis of the contemporary gourmand. Rather than bake the cakes and puddings we're accustomed to, perfumer Mandy Aftel gives us a complex, sinister vanilla. A layer of smoky tea picks up on vanilla's leathery facets and steers vanilla away from either the musky plush of the oriental (Shalimar, Youth Dew, Musc Ravageur) or the slush of the gourmand.

From the first sniff, it's apparent that Vanilla Smoke will avoid any custard clichés. The bright topnote that highlights the leathery dryness comes from citrus, an ostensibly 'foody' material. Aftel's site lists yellow mandarin and I assume the note and the material are synonymous. Guerlain Shalimar, the classic vanilla oriental, places a bright bergamot note on vanilla, but uses it to enhance the culinary appeal. Aftel's use of culinary materials to create non-gourmand aroma profiles is a clever turn and gives Vanilla Smoke a Cheshire Cat smile.

After the shimmer of the topnotes, Vanilla Smoke hovers at skin level, the ideal altitude for its tarry leather to play out. If it were more expansive, or had a longer trail the balance might be lost. The basenote nature of vanilla gives Vanilla Smoke better endurance than might be expected in an all-natural perfume. The spiced resinousness and subtle sweetness of vanilla play out in an evolving shape over the course of the day.

A natural vanilla perfume that smells like rubber, smoke and darkness throws into question the simplistic, sweet desserts we've been fed. Aftel doesn't simply reframe vanilla or dress it out differently. She creates the opportunity for the wearer to rediscover vanilla.

(from scenthurdle.com)