La Memoire Retrouvee

This is such an underappreciated masterpiece deserving of much love and praise. This perfume is singularly beautiful. It's a rich oriental with an amber base overlaid with a spicy gourmand twist. It opens with top notes of bright mandarin and powdery iris. The base is a decadent melange of rich labdanum, sandalwood and chocolate laced with cinnamon. Truly unique in every aspect. It's reminiscent of more decadent times, having a lavish vintage feel. I find the scent strangely comforting, as there's something oddly familiar about it that I can't place. Thus the name which translates to "recovered memory", truly it lives up to this title....and I treasure it deeply.

This one failed on me utterly. It went on as a nicely spiced amber with vanilla tones, but dried down into a raw dough scent, just nasty. The sandalwood was present as a faint suggestion of wood, but the uncooked dough note was strong enough to take over completely and sort of make this stomach turning. Might work better on another person.

Yes, Sadly this one didn't work for me either- but for very different reasons.I also got the spicy amber and sandalwood but was left with a very synthetic powdery note.I really couldn't detect any mandarin, chocolate or Iris. Not my favourite of L'antichambre's beautiful fragrances.

* l'Antichambre - La Memoire Retrouvee Cinnamon and Chocolate opening plus citrusy notes - little bit sweet. Then, something like leather appears with Iris during its evolution. Then, it totally changes to a dry sandalwood base. Well made one - very very good! At least a try! :D

I too had high hopes for this one, based on the notes. I had a similar response as the others where there was something just "off" about it. The labadnum and iris do not combine well with the citrus. I do not detect the more gourmand notes of chocolate and cinnamon at all.