La Fin Du Monde

This one of my favorites - if not favorite fragrance of all time so be warned, this is bias. The end of the world it was, when I first smelled this fragrance and realized - this was it, the best of perfumery to my nose. My journey was over, I’ve come home and that home is the epitome of warmth. This is a powdery resinous iris masterpiece. The gunpowder is a beautiful juxtaposition of authority and intensity - without it, the end of the world is delicate and restful - which doesn’t mirror the horrors of life. I think the story behind this is beautiful and fitting. The popcorn doesn’t read realistic or gourmand but rather adds to a creamy, bready accord; reminiscent of freshly toasted bread spread with butter. It’s juvenile yet refined, messy yet clean, complex yet familiar. I went through 2 bottles in a year and haven’t repurchased because I know it’s all I’m going to use, my other fragrances will macerate and rot before this gets clawed out of my hands. If this ever gets discontinued I will be wailing in the streets. I can’t describe this fragrance without fawning over it but my best attempt to be objective is this - it’s buttery iris, that could have some similarities to 90’s bullet lipstick. The resins add a warmth but they aren’t heavy and don’t translate as incense - this isn’t a spicy fragrance either, the cumin is weak and the sesame adds to the warmth from the resins. It’s not a floral but the iris is very detectable, it’s not a sweet gourmand either but you can argue that it is buttery and bready. The most detectable notes are the popcorn (really more butter than real popcorn), iris, black pepper, carrot seed and sesame combination, and the gunpowder. The gunpowder lingers throughout the wear as a metallic smokiness; it’s not a bonfire smoke and the metalliciness doesn’t smell like a hospital, it literally smells like gunpowder. It does have a pencil shavings quality - like You by Glossier. The gunpowder is punchy at first but fades rather quickly which leaves a smoky base lingering in the background. Her only flaw - she’s weak and doesn’t last. Objectively, La Fin Du Monde is smokey iris skin scent but she’s perfection to me. There’s nothing that really smells like this but I’d say it’s a pioneer of the peppery iris musk revolution started by Glossier You. It’s like a distant sexy great aunt of You, Sonic Flower, and Another 13 - the gunpowder does make it truly unique. If you like those, you’ll like likely this, or at least find it inoffensive.

The Enigma of Amigara Fault, a horror short-story by artist and writer Junji Ito, takes place after an earthquake shears off a mountainside revealing hundreds of human-shaped recesses in the cliff. A TV broadcast of the area draws a large crowd, and the protagonist meets a fellow traveller investigating the fault who reveals they saw the fault on TV. Specifically, they saw hole in the cliff which was theirs. Belonged to them, made for them. Someone begins to climb the cliff side. He looks back at the crowd in horror, tells the crowd to send goodbyes to his mother, and enters the perfectly fitted opening. He sinks, heavy, into the dark. Though the remainder of this story (which will remain unspoiled) plays on claustrophobia and body-horror, these topics fall short to me when compared to the terror of cosmic compulsion. Seeing something foreign, yet painfully, perfectly bespoke. The eldritch flattery of knowing you belong to a siren so completely, you are powerless to resist its song of the void. La Fin du Monde might as well have been made for me, or I might as well have made it myself. On my skin, the opening smells a bit like kettle corn at the fair but sweeter and just starting to burn. There is a strange dirty-yet-powdery earthiness from the gunpowder accord. A subtle, gourmand smokiness like honeyed lapsang tea lingers through the mid. The popcorn is short-lived. On my skin, the sweetness and earthiness fade into creamy and very powdery iris. In fact, after an hour it's barely sweet at all! And the earthiness is getting...clean? And the iris is not creamy anymore, it's photorealistic? It's starting to smell SOAPY underneath!? IT'S PERFECT. An incredible transition and one that I think actually accurately captures the end of the world ELDO wanted to emulate. La Fin du Monde is just the end of *our* world. After the fireworks and popcorn, the dust will eventually settle. It will sit, dormant, for ages and ages but even if it takes an eternity a flower will eventually bloom once more. It's a favorite of mine, but it may not be for you. Test it first. All in all, I think it's an intensely wearable frag. Completely unisex on my skin. In cooler weather, I think it could work in pretty much any environment even the office if you go a little light. Would def be cloying in hot and humid weather. Longevity is great.

I've been meaning to review this fragrance for a year now - it is true magic to me, my signature fragrance. Gorgeous blend, evolving scent, unique as all hell. I honestly can't wholeheartedly agree with most other reviews (esp critical reviews): I don't find this to be candy sweet/gourmand OR too musky OR too powdery... or maybe, it's all of those things to a "too much" degree. That's not to say this perfume is beast mode, it has good performance but not a monster by any means - it's just a LOT going on, in the best way. I enjoy spicy, ambery, incensey, and unique/savory gourmand themes, and this fragrance makes my senses light up. It smells like excitement, like both the anticipation and the afterglow of doing something exciting, intense, or stressful. One comment I've seen repeatedly that I do agree with is that there's a fairground feeling, but I don't get it from the popcorn (which is mild on my skin) - rather, the gunpowder smells like fireworks being set off, and that singed, sparkly note signals thrill. The sweetness, for me at least, comes mostly from the carrot seed, which is quite prominent on my skin; but it lingers on the edges, you're never able to get a STRONG sniff of it so it keeps you going back for more. This fragrance is definitely a sniffer for me, I can't keep my nose from my wrist when I'm wearing it (even after a year of wearing it regularly) because it's just so fascinating and DIFFERENT from any other fragrances I've tried. The notes list is insane, the accords are insane, and it just makes the most gorgeous chaos. One thing I also want to really emphasize is that this perfume is *V E R S A T I L E* - any season, any time of day, just about any occasion (I wouldn't wear it for extremely formal, but that's hardly every day). For reference, I'm a very androgynous (consistently mistaken for male) and very confident woman, and this fragrance just feels badass in an unobtrusive way - like it just embodies confidence but doesn't override everyone and everything else in the room. I'm in love with everything about it, and now that it's macerated for a year it has even more depth and moderately improved performance.

my favorite fragrance at the moment, dare I say an all-time favorite, though it's a damn shame it lasts next to nothing the popcorn and gunpowder accord combo is super unique and cozy, but it's a "rough" kind of cozy, it perfectly captures that dystopian vibe of something sweet and metallic after the initial popcorn opening, the carrot seed and sesame really stand out to me: they blend so well with the iris note, and I’ve read they actually used iris absolute instead of just orris, which makes perfect sense cause it reminds me of that super unique iris profile in L'Attesa by Masque Milano, which also utilizes both orris and the actual iris flower -- anyway, it does pairs so nicely with the freesia (I assume that's the subtle floral component) and whatever is supposed to be the gunpowder accord, which I suspect is actually the cumin seed along with the powdery iris absolute, yes? sitting at the base alongside ambrette, and it's the classic ELDO ambrette, lovely and sharp though distilled into the most subtle version possible everything I’ve just described lasts merely two hours on the skin, or four if we're being generous and counting the time you'd spent burying your nose into your own arm (which I do, because as you can tell, I’m obsessed with this fragrance) I know ELDO will likely never release an Extrait or Absolu version line, the way Byredo did their best sellers, to give us their classics with more longevity, but I would absolutely love it if they did !! truly, this could easily be my signature and the only fragrance I’d ever wear, however -- the price tag and the lack of longevity sort of negate that for me lol then again, the scent itself is a masterpiece, an absolute masterpiece

I wish there was no freesia top note in this, everything else going on here is really interesting, but for the first half an hour or so I smell overwhelmingly like cheap 90's freesia perfume. This is going to be a difficult wear for a lot of unisex/masc folk, I'm struggling a bit with it myself right now. Once it dries down and the freesia fades a bit, it's much more unisex. The sandalwood is milky and amps up the buttery popcorn accord. The gunpowder, pepper and cumin are more subtle, but noticably spicy and savoury. The iris is well blended and hard to pick out, but every now and then I catch that soft, smooth texture amidst the chaos. There's still that sharp floral freesia floating around in the mid dry down (and a lot still in the scent trail), but it's much less intense off the skin now. If it were replaced with a sparkly Cola accord (or something similarly bright and warm, and maybe aniseedy?), this would be so much more enjoyable/wearable for me. The freesia is mostly gone after about an hour and a half. Dry down gets smokier and milkier as it goes on. Carrot seed is more noticable at this point, it calms what's left of that gross freesia and sits nicely alongside the popcorn. I'm actually really enjoying this fragrance now! Four to five hours longevity. By hour 5 though it's a very subtle and smoky, buttery carrot skin scent. Two sprays for intimate sillage, four for moderate. Ironically, what with global warming being one of the driving factors of our world ending, I can't see La Fin Du Monde being pleasant in hot weather. It's a little much to wear even sitting by the radiator tbh.