Lèche-Flamme

Commented on Hiram Green's HYDE earlier, & if you know that scent, the best way to sum up Leche Flamme is to say that Hyde would merely be training wheels compared to this absolutely nuclear lactonic campfire. This is only for the truly initiated, brave & adventurous looking to intentionally overdose on birch tar - But wow, it's awesome! It's almost guaranteed to shock you on your first exposure, even if it's just a portion of a drop. Anything it touches, it will hold the scent for a week. It's literally the first thing I smell when I approach my collection of about 200 bottles - It's THAT potent. Some will quickly grow addicted to it like I did, many will hate it, & even more will need a handful of exposures to appreciate it. But once you've gotten there, this is seriously amazing & a truly "epic" scent. It's another no-holds-barred blend from Jimmy, & that's why I love it. Big & bold, entirely unapologetic, but still nicely balanced & pleasant to wear if you dig its vibe. A great example of "niche" without boundaries, IMO.

I blind bought it a week or so ago from someone i knew and he didn’t like it, he described it as a “barbecue “ fragrance and at first after i made the purchase i was a bit nervous bc if i didn’t like it i’d have to keep it in my collection.But nope i absolutely loved it, somehow off putting at first sniff but after that i absolutely loved it so much.

A real campfire with a slight vanilla to round it out. Going to be too real for a lot of people, but pretty holy to me. An experience. ART!

THE TOWERING INFERNO. Breathtaking. I mean it literally. The ultimate extreme, the giddy limit, the ne plus ultra of smoke in fragrance. Want to smell as if you're having your nostrils repeatedly scraped up and down, back and forth over the scratchy interior of a well-used, historic chimney, where they burn only the best old-growth hardwood? Behold! It is here. I love smoke - in perfume, and in life - and this is simply and gloriously THAT. Which works for me, but won't for most. This one makes the luxury-sauna-on-fire of Bois d'Ascese seem gently glowing, Hyde like a mellow chitchat, Perfumer H Charcoal like an arty watercolour sketch, T Rex like a flowery fop. Leche Flamme is HARD WOOD HARDWOOD SMOKE all the way through, all the way down. Some so-called smoky fragrances give you wisps, wafts, lingering hints of smoke - but this has great billowing, nearly-choking clouds of the stuff. There is no compromise on offer, so don't ask for one. It IS very very well done, classy, and not bitter or toxic-seeming - no notes of gasoline, burnt rubber, or gunpowder; it's natural and well-tended wood all the way. Those tobacco and fruit notes aren't detectable as themselves, under the blanket (behind the smokescreen?) of all the banging birch tar, but they are softening and rounding the contours ever so slightly. Still, ooooof ... it's relentless. Sticks to its hardcore, authentic-fireplace thing with a brutal discipline which reminds me most strongly of Union's Celtic Fire. Admirable for that. But in its stony insistence on being smoke and nothing but, this, finally, is my final frontier of being smoky ENOUGH and me not wanting it to get any darker. (Took a long time to make the journey and it took me to some wild, wild places.) 98% of humans, maybe 99.7% of women won't wish to smell like this. I still, cautiously, love it - but it's no easy beast to live with. Right out there on the edge between 'perfume' and 'amazing technical recreation' of a real-world experience. Honestly the first fragrance that I was ever driven to layer a mist of something sweeter over, simply because even I, fume-head, could not stand how take-no-prisoners the smoke element was. (It was Guerlain Bois d'Armenie btw, and they harmonised gorgeously - that smoky vanillic benzoin from heaven managed to mellow out even Leche Flamme's raging flames). Incredibly assertive at first (never mind "fills a room", it's detectable from the corridor and may be punching some noses out in the lobby!) but it does burn down a little within a couple of hours. On skin, can grow a bit gentler and warmer over time, and dies back to nearly-manageable levels after 2-3 h. Its total longevity is surprisingly light on skin - maybe 6-7h? - but it's a sharper, more acrid and much much longer ride on fabrics, where it might still fume away smokily for days... possibly weeks. Might traumatise others (especially those who've dealt with real-life fire incidents) and it's certainly not work-appropriate... unless you work on a kipper-curing line or in a sausage-smoking factory. Price is terrifying. Hard to find. For all that: if you want to explore, then stake out your absolute boundaries on birch tar, burnt offerings and sheer olfactive brute force - this is definitive.

You need to sniff a fair share of challenging perfumes for you to appreciate this one. This opens up very dry and smokey with noticeable tobacco and fruits. It's so dry that this would choke someone in the first 5 minutes. After the initial blast tones down, the dried fruits will be the front with slight boozy touch at the side and leathery nuances from the birch and guaiac. The smoke tones down a lot after this settles and is surprisingly a pleasant winter fragrance. What makes this one very expensive is the hand painted art bottle. Very unique and a must for connoisseurs. Strictly cold weather fragrance!