Charcoal

Everything that is woody - sap, resin, green leaves, bark, needles, roots, sawdust, smoke and charcoal, taken to the Nth degree - a just extraordinary evocation of campfires and bonfires and damp autumn walks through forest. Deep and dark and wondrous. It is utterly natural - in some ways it's reminiscent of Imaginary Authors' A City on Fire, but made of entirely organic smells rather than being livened up with tangs of burning rubber, plastic, etc. Charcoal is arguably more the smell of a place than a perfume, but it's so viscerally intense and beautiful it made me burst into tears in a public place - the "Perfume" exhibition in Somerset House, London, where it's one of 10 featured smells. Apparently Lyn Harris based it on her beloved granddad's garden fires, which makes sense, for its emotional heft as well as its strength. I hung on to the beanbag in the exhibition like a greedy maniac, huffing away at it hungrily while wiping away the tears. It just does something to me. And it has ended my quest for the perfect woodsmoke perfume - the many, many other things I've tried - while literally asking sales assistants: "have you got anything which will make me smell like a bonfire?" - sometimes get close, but nearly always lose their nerve and sneak in extraneous notes of vanilla or fruit or incense or 'urban' smells. This doesn't do that: it is about SMOKE, real wood smoke, not incense. (I believe it has a good whack of cade, though, so beware if that's a no-no for you.) But that is why I love Charcoal - it's uncompromising and honest and - just in my view of course - it is beyond perfection. Whenever or wherever I sniff it, I'm instantly outside, listening to the crackle of burning stuff. It's not aiming to please - I think many people will find it too austere, maybe too rough - but for me it is a genuine revelation of what scent can do. (I don't burst into tears after smelling things very often... and I can only apologise if this review seems pretentious - but this one gets me right in the feelings. ) ETA: a respected friend tells me it "smells of kippers". Which is an impression I can understand ... in some ways it really does (the smokiness at least - there's no fishiness!). I still maintain this is a total masterpiece and close to a scent miracle, for me.

On your walk through the woods, you smell the damp fallen logs and green young saplings around you. Sunlight occasionally breaks through the canopy but down here things are still humid and earthy from last night's rain. After 30 minutes of walking you approach a camp. You can smell the first wisps of smoke through the trees, beginning to mingle with the natural smells of the forest. At the camp itself the air is filled with a beautiful ashy smokiness, the smell of campfire embers. You stay and rest for a while, taking it all in before you turn back home. On your walk back the smell of the camp lingers on your clothes, the smoke of course but also the smell of freshly chopped wood. Naturalistic and full of atmosphere. I would marry someone who wore this.

Noooooo. No no no no. I shouldn't have tried this on. It's my IDEAL signature scent but do you think I can afford $300 for 50ml? Do you?! How does it transform from 'steelworks' to 'cyborg cat'?? Like the hideous and beautiful lifecycle of a cursed creature, packed into 5 hours? Do I decant this stuff forever? Do I anoint myself with dirt and ancient pot pourri and literal charcoal every morning? Do I invent a new niche of foot pics?? It was nice to know you for a day, signature scent that I'll never wear because you're too damn expensive. 😭 probably just go be basic and buy bois imperial or something

I agree that it smells like you just entered a florist shop, but only in the opening. As it dries down, it smells similar Amouage Royal Tobacco (at least to me), but its just bette in the sense that it smells more natural. A very interesting fragrance that can be worn anywhere and anytime. Great creation.

Truly lovely birch-tar/leather (iso-quin) - aromatic which relates the story without much narrative support required. Strong projection & longevity; a rarity for this minimalist house.

Ohhhh.just so beautiful.not everyone would love it, but it’s truly a masterpiece. Smells nostalgic gasoline with gorgeous flowers. Worth the value. Don’t blind buy it though.

i really love this. it is for those who like the smell of gasoline and sharpies. sooooo good

Beautiful fragrance...at first sniff, it took me back to memories of walking back home after church on a Sunday evening in Autumn. The smokiness is just so intoxicating and I simply couldn’t get enough(love smoky/incense fragrances!) Sadly it didn’t last long on my skin..so wanted it to last longer, as it was my favourite scent out of the samples I was sent. ‘Incense Water’ was a close second..beautiful fragrance also. I am very tempted to buy a bottle of ‘Charcoal’ because I have fallen in love with the scent..but it just doesn’t project enough. If I’m wearing such a beautiful fragrance, I want people to know about it!

Charred patchouli, with a dusting of church incense. Earthy, woody, green, sweet and medicinal. Glorious winter scent, if applied with a light hand. It's very intense.....

Strong smoke with some hints of petrol. Where Margiela is By the Fireplace, this is By the Campfire. Black lord vibes. Sticks around for a long time, but doesn't project excesively. Still, wear with caution. Winter scent.

A polite smoky cade dominant scent that performs like a Jo Malone cologne

The sky outside her tent was still dark when she opened her eyes. The tarp’s interior surface glistened, a dome of stars curving around her, close enough to touch. Condensation from her own breath, she noted, and the thought made her suddenly claustrophobic. She unzipped her sleeping bag, threw on her shawl, and pushed out of the tent. It was later in the morning than she thought. Outside was a grey blue mist thick enough that she couldn’t see her little old Honda parked on the edge of her campsite, much less the dark hills that rose up on either side of the valley. The unseen river sloshed and churned, reverberating all around and inside her. Closer than the mist was the smell of cold smoke from last night’s fire. Not hers, she never made fires when camping alone, but her neighbors’, three men and a younger woman who had been here three nights. The first two nights they left her alone, and above the constant noise of the river she could only hear laughter, or the woman’s occasional yelps in complaint. But last night one of the men asked if she wanted to make her dinner by their fire, so she did. They asked how long she had been there, and where she was going next, but mostly they let her be as she watched her pot come to boil and ate her dinner silently. Thinking now about how she must have seemed to them, her face grew hot with shame. The woman from last night had looked at her with shining eyes, and all she could do was look away. Maybe she had forgotten what it was like to be around people, after all this time. And now here she was, alone with her tent in the middle of Colorado two weeks before Christmas. She thought that a pot of coffee would be good but her body felt so heavy in the cold, so she just hugged her knees and pulled the shawl tighter around herself. Where had it all gone so wrong? After crying for a little while she calmed down, and she became aware again of the sound of the river. She heard it now clearer than ever, and realized that she was listening to the quiet roar of riders going into battle, more than a hundred years ago. Opening her eyes, she was a lynx on the edge of the water. She smelled the world in photographic detail: campfire smoke stretching out like a tired spring, sweet vapor bursts released when river spray crashes on rock, forest dew harvested by morning mist. In a corner of her mind she thought of her children whom she would see at Christmas, and her grandchildren whose names she could never remember. But forget them, they have no need of her now. All her energies were needed here, for awaiting her was the entire length of the day in shadow.

Notes from the Somerset House "Perfume: A Sensory Journey Through Contemporary Scent" exhibit, curated by Claire Catterall and Lizzie Ostrom: "In Charcoal, Harris has found beauty in a material usually considered prosaic. The perfume holds tension between hot, rough smoke and a smooth green translucency, and is built around two grades of Juniper oil. Charcoal is deeply personal, informed by happy times Harris spent with her grandfather in Scotland, and remembered elements of his person and smell, dungarees smelling of sawn wood, rough hands because he'd been gardening, clean soapy skin and love of pipe tobacco." Notes: "Smoke - Cade rectified, Cistus Absolute Spain, Isobutyl Quinoline; Rough - Vetiver Haiti, Patchouli Indonesia, Cedar moss; Smooth - Juniper wood, Cedar wood Virginia, Elemi Iran; Transparent green - Galbanum, Leaf alcohol; Sweetness - Angelica, Frankincense, leather note, Iso E Super, Musk".

You never get anything obnoxious or blaringly synthetic from a Perfumer H creation. It’s always soft and sort of quiet like when you catch a whiff of jasmine blowing in the breeze. Charcoal is PH’s entry in the popular category of niche smokey and while it smells like the flannel shirt you wore to last night’s bonfire, it’s also light and sheer, wet not dry, like an autumn drizzle and wet oak leaves on the ground. It’s not my favorite of this sort of fragrance but it is, like everything I’ve tried from the brand, highly wearable and easy.

must get a bottle of this charcoal, just tried a sample and it's amazing , website not very user friendly sadly, any ideas ?

To me this smells exactly like walking into a flower shop on an ice cold, smoggy winter afternoon.