Narkissos

Narcissus is my holy grail. The smell of wild daffodils promises everything I could want in a perfume: honeyed, floral, dirty, animalic notes contrasted against a chilly bitter freshness of green leaves. Fragrances that promise to live up to this are illusive, often short lived (Le Temps d'une Fête, Fleur de Narcisse, Jonquille de Nuit...) or difficult to obtain (Song of Aubrac, Darren Alan Jonquille, Au Dela Narcisse...). When one of my favourite perfumers decided to release a fragrance centred on this magical flower, I was inevitably very excited and had a lot of expectations for Narkissos. The fragrance's opening is gorgeous, very musky and buttery, capturing the smell of a narcissus corona. The musk accord is particularly fantastic, I'd love to see Angelos centre a fragrance around it at some point. The musky notes soon move into the background and the fragrance transitions into it's core jonquil prominent character. Fruity, honeyed orange blossom and jonquil really are the stars of the show here, supported by leather, tobacco and hay. Expectations are everything with this perfume. For me, Narkissos leans more towards heady jonquil rather than a field of fresh daffodils. It's astonishing how he's combined such brooding heavy notes likes tobacco, leather and orange blossom and the result is joyful and airy. It's sexy and beautiful in its own right and one I'm considering getting (and would definitely buy a 15ml of), but for me, I'm left longing for that fresh, green bitterness to contrast against all the deep creamy sultriness. Narkissos is fantastic, but I think expectations would be better set if the perfume was named after orange blossom. Angelos' lightness of touch elevates what can be quite a heavy and cloying flower to something effortlessly sensual. The search for the perfect narcissus fragrance continues...

Opening has a slightly funky nuance to it. It ever so slightly reminded me of an oud funk but it's very subtle and lasts for maybe 30 seconds. It then turns to a thick assortment of heavy florals. I'm not trying to be cringey-poetic here but best I can explain what I smell: I picture a warm, slightly humid garden/forest/jungle of fantasy-sized flowers, it's the crack of dawn, the sun on the horizon is sending rays of light between the foliage, the flower petals are starting to bloom and a hazy layer of pollen is slowly falling from above, further causing the light to refract and illuminate the air/atmosphere. Main notes I get are thick florals(the bulk of the fragrance), a warm, slightly used leather, a subtle but viscous honey, This is the first frag I've tried that has Narcissus (or at least Narcissus-forward) in it, and I usually don't enjoy "yellow" florals but this here is an exception. I think it's all blended well here where, as I said above, there's a sort of haziness to this but it's not powdery. It might be whatever the "animalic" notes are. As fernmoss described below, there's a lot of depth to Narkissos and it has a sort of bubble of layers, like the Earth's atmosphere or an onion(not the smell) that vary in how the fragrance smells up close vs arm's length vs across the room. When I left my room for a few minutes and returned, I was surprised how the whole room still had a pleasant aroma to it, it resembled how it smells on skin but different enough to showcase the complexity and interactions between the notes.

Narkissos walks a daring and gripping line between something innocent and soapy, and outrageously carnal. The scent demonstrates a dramatic closeness, buzzing with the consistent hum of sharp spices. It conjures a milky, mentholated bar of soap, delicately wrapped in sun-dried flower petals and herbs. It’s rough around the edges, dry and spiky, and yet never feels uncouth. If you close your eyes, you wouldn’t feel out of place laying in a field of narcissus and chamomile in the late stages of spring. As it continues to develop one small step at a time, the dried leafiness of tobacco and leather almost takes it into the honeyed, hay-like territory of immortelle, but remains grounded in its glowing white petals, comfortingly reminiscing on the child-like wonder of playing in the fields.

Smells astonishingly different from various distances and is difficult to describe as all excellent perfumes are. There is an aspect to this fragrance that resembles the most high-class royal white soap you could imagine, and I believe this to be the blending of the florals with a really good deer musk accord. When for an instant I seem to succeed in smelling all the notes at once that soapy smell is so good and unisex. Up close, this is honey and white flowers with a subtle animalic aspect that then turns into a nostalgic yet abstract scent of various powdery purple flowers, which remind me of lilacs and wisterias even though I almost never smell those flowers, somehow this scent reminds me of what I'd think they'd smell like. All that mixed with more rare-to-smell white florals. I love florals so this line is great for someone like me. Les Indemodables Oranger Sirocco really made me begin appreciating more starkly floral fragrances. If you know Roja Diaghilev, then this is sort of in the same sort of floral ambery chypre ballpark, yet Narkissos is much, much softer than Diaghilev and frankly more beautiful for my tastes. And the honey steers this this in a different direction. This to my nose is a beautiful work of art and I would recommend it to women and only to men who appreciate the note of orange blossom and enjoy honey fragrances. My favorite notes are orange blossom, heliotrope, lilac, hay, tobacco, and honey so this is right up my alley. You could say the overall impression of Narkissos is that of a fantasy floral, yet not too exotic; a fantasy floral impression of all the most beautiful florals of North America or Greece. If you have smelled Myths Man by Amouage then the chrysanthemum note there is not unlike the smell of the floral blend in here; yet there is something ethereal and extremely beautiful about one of the other florals in Narkissos that eludes me and I absolutely love. I'd guess it's the jonquille. Some could argue it is rather light, but I think if it was any heavier the beauty of the delicate floral sillage would be greatly compromised. At any rate, the honey helps glue the fragrance to the skin and gives a remarkably comforting scent. So addictive...beautiful heartbreaking florals just like I like