Ecclesiae

This is my 2nd favourite "church" incense style fragrance. My favourite is Jovoy's fabulous La Liturgie des Heures. Arte Profumi's take, in Ecclesiae, is a shade less 'churchy', a little more open and airy. I'd liken LdH as being a fragrance reminiscent of being at a full-scale Catholic mass, with all the great tradition and pomp and circumstance. Ecclesiae, is like being in the cathedral after the ceremony; the scents and memories linger but you've entered a slightly more reflective space. I really love LdH, but I also really love Ecclesiae. I think both will be permanent members of my collection. Ecclesiae opens with a bright incense, definitely churchy to my nose, but it's supported with a strong Patchouli base which becomes more prominent in the dry down. I still get evocative wafts after 7-8 hours so longevity is pretty good on me. Coming from a Catholic heritage I really didn't think I'd enjoy church-based incense fragrances. LdH showed me how wrong I was in that, and Ecclesiae has only confirmed it. If you're after a high quality incense style fragrance with a church vibe I think you'd have to search very hard for one better than either LdH or Ecclesiae.

A beautiful, smooth frankincense scent. The incense is on the peppery side. Its lemony facets brought out by the elemi but never sharp or too metallic. A little quiet but none the worse for it and definitely on the churchy side as the name suggests. It's more natural-smelling than many incense perfumes (Heeley Cardinal , CdG Avignon ), and lasts all day. A real overlooked gem.

Returned to a sample of this today, and now I adore it. My first impression primarily influenced by needing to compare Ecclesiae to Avignon. This time it was personal because it is the smell of my middle school band room, a place for which I never felt nostalgia, however, I distinctly remember focusing on its scent consistently because it was oddly woody and rubbery.

#955 in my "Tour de Fragrance" This is a milder scent than I was expecting. More vetiver than anything else. Very soft, and for me disappointingly subtle incense note. I wasn't expecting Buddhist temple levels of incense, or enough sandalwood to deforest an Indonesian island, but I was hoping for more than this. I prefer more overtly woody incense scents like Kilian "Sacred Wood", Zadig & Voltaire "This is Him", Montale "Wood & Spices", Byredo "Gypsy Water", Amouage "Interlude Man", Lataffa "Raghba." I realize such scents can be too much for those with less oriental leanings. Maybe this is the right scent for those who prefer just to dip a toe in those waters instead of diving in off the high board. A marketing guy for the perfumer would probably call this "delicate", "subtle", "refined", which I usually translate as "short on perfume oil and unlikely to make a strong and lasting impression." And this is in fact not much on projection. But it does last till lunch on the skin and longer on your clothing. So it works for those times when you don't want your fragrance to be the next day topic of conversation of those who had to sit next to you in the conference room, at the play, or in the car with you on the ride to and from the concert. Those are times when I often skip the fragrance altogether out of courtesy. But I think this is not a bad call call for those times when you want to smell pleasant, if they smell your fragrance at all, without the fragrance coming off like something you applied the day before and put on the same shirt because you didn't actually make it home from the night before (I'm looking at you Atelier Colognes).

Rather disappointed with this one. I have to agree with a number of comments below : past the initial (rather short-lived) phase, which is liturgical incense forward, this is more woody than incensey/smoky/resinous. Two additional comments : i) it's of course a matter of personal taste but even this initial phase I regard as inferior to / less refined / less evocative than fragrances that are in the same ballpark (Cardinal, Liturgie des Heures, Avignon etc.). And ii), peformance is weak, both in terms of longevity and projection. All in all it's still ok because I managed to get my hands on a FB at half the retail price, but this is certainly not worth its full price point.