Mal-Aimé

Iskander was Corticchiato’s citrus chypre, and one got the feeling he felt it was obligatory to have one as do most houses large and small. Mal-Aime is thus his prize fighter into the ring of green perfumes. I love nearly everything Corticchiato/d’Empire has done, and I have a soft spot for green perfumes that is not so much a soft spot as it is a blinding weakness for them. It was a foregone conclusion I was going to, at least, very much like Mal-Aime. I like it more than even I could anticipate, and that’s thanks largely to Corticchiato taking this tired old genre and giving it an invigorating shot in the arm. The star of this perfume is inula, also known as fleabane, and smelling it in Mal-Aime makes me (and a huge number of others for that matter) wonder why the hell we’ve never smelled this before. We’ve been missing out! Apparently it’s been available as an essential oil for donkey’s years but has never received any attention as a perfumer’s material. It just goes to show you that majorities - democratic, meritocratic, or kleptocratic (modern perfumery is a homogenous mix of all) - aren’t always right. The opening has that classic sharp galbanum-like green hiss we know and come to expect with green perfumes, but there is a lot more besides. Thanks to the inula, this sharp hiss has a deeply aromatic celery component to it - not cooked celery, rather celery pulverized by a blender. There is also a big salty and citrusy component. It’s the strangest combination of pungent weeds and weed-like grasses crushed under your feet plus the suave and proper aromatics of fine culinary herbs like oregano, tarragon, and bay. Some of this is, I’m sure, generously overlapped with a nettle accord, as anyone who has smelled a proper nettle soup will attest smells exquisite, but it is quite hard for me at least to tell where one ends and the other begins since I’m very unfamiliar with inula. Thanks to the floral aspect of inula, helped along by thistle and rose, there is a very pleasant sweet and pink floral thread weaving its way in and out and around the bracing greenness that becomes more apparent in the heart. The sweeter floralcy, which is almost a bit mimosa/cassie like, is far more present in the perfume’s sillage than on your skin in front of your nose; I spent about an hour in a room, vacated it for about five minutes, and could smell it quite a bit more clearly when I returned. A well-judged dry and rooty iris/orris note lurking in the base gives it enough depth to keep the whole picture nicely rounded but doesn’t take the perfume anywhere close to a descension into a dry and woody cliche. The summation of these notes and textures creates an overall effect that, to me, is just as profound as the smell of inula itself: there is a true and palpable feeling of a sun-scorched arid landscape, the aromatic greenery is parched but far from dry-nearing-death and their aromatics are concentrated, but then you catch the briefest but most tantalizing whiffs of flowers as their scents float on the misty and salty sea air that provides the parched landscape with a balm against the oppressive heat. This image, the textures, the smells, are perfectly in my mind’s eye. When Corticchiato is at his best, he is a master illusionist. He has this ability to firmly place me there with him in the times and places that inspired him to make a perfume. For this, for the exceptional technical care in this and all of his compositions, and for finally giving inula a much deserved and well overdue spotlight, it’s a standing-O from me.

MAL AIME', 2021 by parfumdempire Some people decide to be outcasts, rebels; society at large may call them mis-fit, but they possess true nobility, they stand still with their believes and they ask nothing to anyone. And so there are plants we do not want anywhere near our edenic gardens; we called them weeds, "erbacce", "mauvaises herbes". it is to those that Corticchiato pays homage in the beautiful Mal Aimé (bad soul). It is a green herbal scent that focuses on inula, aplant that grows spontaneously in Corsica as well as in Riviera Ligure (where I live); it presents yellow little florals. Inula when distilled smell herbal (obviously), camphoraceous, a little pungent, but it also possesses a certain sweetnes with honey undertones with hints of chamomille. It smells rosy as well. Mal Aimé opens green and bitter with an almost sharp galbanum or galbanum-like material; this is soon softened by the inula with its sweet undertones somehow accentuated. This constrast makes me roll my eyes every time I spray it. There is also a saline and slightly citrusy component that accompany the inula with musks in the background. It is pungent and herbal, but it is also deliciously aromatic! The bset part comes when nettle joins the show which i recognize because we use nettles a lot in Italy for culinary reasons: ravioli, soups, and digestif as well! It adds a certian unctuosity to the composition augmenting the herbal facets of Mal Aimé. The floral aspect of inula may have been amplified by rose material which counterbalance the greeness. But what srikes me the most is what I have read on Parfum d'Empire webpage. Mal Aimè is a tribute to a close friend of Monsier Corticchiato, an engineer specialized in botanical extraction equipment who shared a fondness for inula. Perfume as a way to remember! Consider following me on IG @alexolympia6

This is so special to me....... I connect to every part of this scent with all of my heart. The name the concept the smell it is so poetically cohesive and compelling. There’s a gorgeous review of this on parfumo that mentions how this scent is for people who have been overlooked and grow to learn that their differences are their strength and it deeply resonated with me I suggest everyone read it. Now to the smell.... Wow! I’ve been on the hunt for a non sweet herbal chamomile scent my whole life and many have tried and failed.. but this one is the one. It’s dry bitter and warm and the imagery it conjures up for me is kind of bleak I admit haha. I always feel like I’m dying when I wear it. Like the doctors told me I only have a day left to live and that I should inform those closest to me but I don’t. Instead I walk out and wander following a highway in a direction I couldn’t care less about. It’s the middle of summer one of the hottest days of the year and the sun is intoxicating me into a sense of delirium. My vision spotty my limbs weak but I go on until I spot a golden clearing of tall grass bleached by the sun and glittered with petals and pollen in the air. There.... I know it immediately that is where I want to rest my bones so I head off into the clearing passing dear and rabbits completely undisturbed by my presence. They know I’m harmless and dissipating from this earth soon. I find an old 70yo pick up truck rotten with rust but beautiful and I climb into the bed in the back and rest as the stars shine bright even in the day light just for me and I perish quietly. Calm melancholic and magical and immediately in my top 3 scents of all time. Lasts forever on me too I smell it all day.

A different kind of Green fragrance. That is how Mal-Aimé feels to me. It strikes me as a bone-dry, herbaceous, earthy perfume rather than your standard vegetal green. It feels like the juice dried up inside the shrubs. It also has this strong salty and musky aroma, which, alongside the earthiness, are most likely facets showcased by the main ingredient, the Fragrant Inula plant. The nettles come strongly in the opening, almost abrasive, but soon tame down. The blackberry accord is non-existent on my skin. It's just super dry and shrub-like, earthy, warm, salty, and musky for the whole time. I love it, but it's easy to see how it might be very challenging to wear and enjoy for most people. It might be Marc Antoine's most unique and most challenging perfume. Not the way Ruade, Tabac Tabou, or the cumin-loaded Oeilleres is, but in how vividly it evokes the aroma of sun-scorched meadows. For me, it is a deeply nostalgic scent, like all well-made agrestic perfumes. It makes me think of roaming the fields in Summer, napping and rolling in hay, and eating cooked baby nettles (an incredibly delicious local dish). Green? Not really. I think of it as herbaceous, earthy, arid, with zero sweetness. The salty and musky facets make it more alluring and interesting. Not only a highly unique and creative perfume but also a time portal in place and time for the right person. A must-try for agrestic perfume lovers. IG:@memory.of.scents

This is wondrously green and bitter straight out of the bottle. The bitter is so good but it doesn’t last long, it mellows into a smoother but very dry, vegetal and sun warmed fragrance with a noticeable undertone of fatty orris which supports all the stringent herb like smells. Some green fragrances have a blue quality to them as well, with cooling watery aspects that offset the green, but this doesn’t. If anything I would say it has yellow notes rich with intense dry heat and sunshine. How it smells in a field of long grass and weeds in very hot weather after a drought, when all the green aromatic smells are concentrated by lack of moisture and the heat is releasing them into the air. Instead of Geosmin which is released by imminent rain you have dust in this parched field. Mal-Aimé picks a direction and commits fully and I respect that. To me it is absolutely perfect. I just wish that it lasted a bit longer.