La Castiglione

Extraordinairy. La Castiglione kind of reminds me of sweet incense burning in an old wooden, dusty home. I barely call any perfume churchy, but this does fit the bill. When I try to smell the sweetness, I get that citrusy, full bodied licorice and while I find licorice to be a very difficult note in perfumery, here it gives off the musty, dusty, sweet depth that binds the other notes together. When I try to smell the patchouli in it my nose interprets the blend like smoky, little-tingles-in-my-nose incense. Some mould, an old floor, like an old basement smell. Some warm binding amber in between. I smell church again. It truly takes me away into a completely different scenery. I pick out the wormwoods and it becomes spicy woodiness. The styrax makes this extra dusty and the myrrh fantastically creates the final puzzle piece to the incense feel. In short, this is extremely complex to my nose, and I love it. It keeps me guessing and interpreting. Complex mouldy, churchy, dusty, spicy-woody incense soil. This is something exquisite. Truly unlike anything else.

I bought mine today at profumeria San Federico in Turin, Italy. It looks like it was the last one. It is 35 degrees Celsius and full swing summer today and it smells great, in the fall, winter and early spring at home in Toronto will be even better I guess. Sillage intimate quickly, but that’s even better :)

With wormwood and liquorice I expected it to smell like absinthe. I do detect those elements, but the fragrance is sweet, draped with hints of fruit, vinegar (from the balsamic elements I presume), and a hint of green. At first the fragrance smell like pain relief patches in traditional Chinese medicine with a hint of fruit and vinegar. It smells more like an old woman with leg pain than the elaborately dressed countess. After a while, as the amber, patchouli, and cedar start to radiate, it becomes a lot more mellow but remains slightly medicinal with a hint of powder and decay - overall relatively generic for an amber base. I can barely associate this scent with the countess at the end of her life, let alone the countess in her prime. This scent is aloof and gnarly, like some kind of fairy tale creature in the woods - the grotesque kind rather than the beautiful type. As mysterious and gothic as the countess was, with her black, draped rooms, shattered mirrors and nocturnal lifestyle, she is still at heart a noblewoman, not an old peasant witch living in a wooden cabin in a dark forest, with dirt in the seams of her cotton dress and her nails. It invokes the smell of the faded photos more than the individual. It is an uncommon and complicated scent for sure; not particularly wearable and not crowd-pleasing. It feels out of place in this day and age; in fact it would probably feel out of place in any day and age. It's like a legend or a ghost story, living outside of the constraints of time, the cycles of life and death. At the moment, I don't see myself wearing it, for if I already own a witchy/gothic fragrance that I adore with its own story. But I'm intrigued by this fragrance and will keep testing the rest of my sample vial. Maybe I'll change my mind, who knows.

I smelled this in store and immediately fell in love. With few recent reviews available, I purchased a decant to spend more intentional time with it before considering a full bottle. The opening is led by absinthe and citron, sharp and green with a slightly bitter, almost ethereal edge. It feels immediately atmospheric, like cold air passing through something resinous and alive. It develops almost immediately. It moves quickly into a heart of licorice, balm, and earthy patchouli. The licorice is smooth rather than syrupy, lending a deep, almost medicinal sweetness that never turns cloying. The balm adds a soft, resinous roundness, while the patchouli grounds everything with an understated earthiness. Together, they create a nuanced tension between sweetness and shadow, reading less like a traditional gourmand and more like a spiced, dark fruit accord suspended in amber light. There is a distinctly gothic character to it, not in an overt or theatrical sense, but in mood. It evokes dim interiors, polished wood, and flickering low light, where sweetness and darkness coexist in quiet balance. The effect is elegant and restrained, slightly nocturnal, and unexpectedly wearable beyond cold weather. Unfortunately, the performance is modest. The sillage begins moderate before becoming intimate fairly quickly, and within a couple of hours it settles close to the skin, leaving only a soft amber trace. Because of this limited longevity, I likely will not pursue a full bottle. Still, I am glad to have a decant, as the opening and early development are genuinely captivating and beautifully composed, and exactly what I’m in search for in a fragrance.

Bright, yet indistinct amber and Haribo gummies: some of the licorice variety, and some not. Lemon and honey pastilles are also present. Sugar coating made after a vintage recipe; the sweet-bitter smell of an old confectionery with solid wood furniture: too shy, though. Easily escaping the memory.

I have to agree with Norma Desmond here, His Mouth will taste of wormwood is the perfect encapsulation of the mood of this bitter, overcast, moonless foggy night of a fragrance. An unsettling, yet deeply moving experience, La Castiglione's creator, Anais Beguine, has completely immersed herself in the muse of La Castiglione. There is a terrifying aloofness to the fragrance, a sharp, bitterness which speaks low, and slow, saying; "That's close enough, come no closer", the scent protects the wearer with the powers of a fragrant amulet. Virginia Oldoini, Countess of Castiglione, was married young, became the mistress of Napoleon III, mingled and hobnobbed with Royalty and thus found her way to Mayer and Pierson, photographers favored by the imperial court, where she found a way to simultaneously give rein to art and narcissism via the invention of photography, having amongst other things, photographs of her ankles and calves taken (everyone knows the second thing the inventor of the camera did was to take a picture of his own genitals, or did he? I bet he did). So, she became, in essence, the pin up girl of 1856. The perfume reflects the distance of the muse and the voyeur on the other side of the lens, the stillness, the coolness, the fulfilment of restrait and a desire to spit squarely in the camera's eye. Some say La Comtesse was a spy, and this rumour is captured in the unfathomable mystery of such an arrangement of perfume notes..... it is a heavy, yet sharp, helium light cacophony, it is a chimera, whilst the perfume celebrates one person, that person has interchangeable heads, many personalities, silent screeches and sub sonic chants which lure and confuse. You can smell liquorice, yet you cannot. You can taste wormwood, but you can't, you feel enlivened, exhilerated, yet gloomy and irritable, unsettled and injured, yet healed. I have to say, it took me many months to grips with this perfume purely because of it's crazy, mad complexity, which brings me to the alleged "madness" of La Comtesse. She wasn't nuts, I assure you. Having had to fight for custody of her child in a time when women's wombs were blamed for everything from the price of sugar to the black death, she fought like a tigress against what would tear most women apart. The darkness and bitterness speaks of her self imposed isolation as the summer of her life began to fade into autumn and eventually settled into the ice of winter. She allegedly locked herself up in her Paris apartment, painted the interior black, banished all mirrors and would only come out at night. So here we have the darkness, the ice, the bitter exterior which has worked it's way inside, worm-wood, like a woodworm, burrowing through the psyche, leaving a brittle skeletal structure and a hell of a lot of dust. Dusty patchouli, which you can't smell, myrrh and copahu which heal and soothe, citron for the zest of sunshiney youth, amber and cedar exuding the strength and confidence of a woman in full bloom. To my nose, the dry down never truly arrives. It falls from a cliff edge into nothingness, having clung by it's bleeding fingernails to the granite cliff edge for hours and hours, when it falls, it falls silently, resignedly into an ocean of nothingness, turning to foam on the waves, like the little mermaid, with not so much as a sigh. Maybe it's a combination of my age and a life lived on a rollercoaster, but I love this, I feel 100% the photograph of La Comtesse as she looks away from the camera into a hand held mirror, but her reflection stares defiantly into the camera's eye. "You may not see me, but I damn well see you". Bravo. A classic.

Horror lovers, have you read "His mouth will taste like wormwood" by Poppy Z. Brite? It's the first thing that popped into my mind when I sniffed La Castiglione: the same blend of cold eroticism, mysticism. supernatural. I agree with wormwood, licorice and amber being the top notes. The drydown reminds me of a drawer full of make up, lipsticks in particular: creaminess with a hint of bitterness. A perfume I'm sure La Castiglione herself would love; I definitely love it!

I seem to have missed the opportunity to buy this and can't find it anywhere. If anyone has it available, please let me know!

Redskyatnight you can find this on Jovoy.com