Violet Chocolatier

Kudos to Mr Kiler for this stunning parfum composition. I tend to either love or detest violet in a parfum. The same can be said of chocolat/cacao. However, this particular blending is really quite amazing. Like NOTHING I've previously experienced and that's saying A LOT! The addition of apricot, hazelnut, and gardenia are strokes of genius. It's well-evident Mr Kiler is an expert craftsman and consummate artist. One may assume, with the notes chosen to create this masterpiece, that the possibility/probability of the finished product being unbearably sweet is an issue definitely to be considered. Happily for us, that could not be farther from truth. Violet Chocolatier is so beautifully and artfully blended, each note serves to enhance and *converse* with each other. Naturally, the violet and the chocolat are the solo instruments. Like a fine Mozart symphony, there is no competition between the players, if you will. Each note has a specific statement to make. At that time, the remaining players lend support and serve to ground the soloist/s. This perfect teamwork produces a fragrant statement in which every single note is *heard* and every single note serves its purpose. Simply amazing. As time passes, honeyed beauty and warmth surround you in an exquisite cloud of spice, flowers, fruits, woods, and cacao. It just doesn't get better than that! I highly recommend this parfum--for the above-mentioned reasons as well as the excellent sillage and longevity. Violet Chocolatier is a masterful example of a grown-up gourmand done right. However, I use the term *gourmand* cautiously. If you can imagine a small Limoges plate filled with lightly-candied violets, lightly-candied rose petals of white and red, gardenia petals, magnolia petals, and on top, the finest french cacao powder, sliced apricots, crumbled hazelnuts, then finally, a drizzle of amber honey throughout. Perfection!

First sniff: Wow! How to describe this perfume? Theoretically, it is a floral-gourmand, which was born from Paul Kiler’s inspiration by viewing one of the paintings of Daria Jabenko, which is a Canadian artist, whose image portrays a sliced pie, having a cup of coffee alongside and some bonbons in the background. It was launched in 2012. And that's what happens when life imitates art! Violet Chocolatier is exactly that painting, in liquid form, inside a bottle. It contains notes of violets, apricots, cocoa, nutmeg and hazelnut. And there's more! The body of the fragrance was made with notes of Magnolia, jasmine, rose, honey and gardenia, ending with the creaminess of the amber and benzoin. Although much appreciated by women, was designed to be unisex. The feeling, when I spray this perfume on my skin, is like apricots covered by a warm chocolate sauce, along with truffles, bonbons and violets. It begins gourmand and is pretty strong. The floral accord of Magnolia, jasmine and rose didn’t excelled on my skin, but the creaminess of benzoin and the sweet, that only honey offers, were quite remarkable during the evolution. Basically, the fragrance is around apricot, cocoa and violet. There is a mixture of sweet, bitter and flowers, that keeps coming and going all the time. I dare say that is one of the most complex perfumes that I have ever felt, and be with it on the skin makes me imagine sitting on a veranda, surrounded by numerous fresh violets, beside a table full of delicacies made of cocoa. It exhales and lasts absurdly! Violet Chocolatier is like a brunch at sunset that, without doubt, causes distraction of others.

As an unapologetic lover of violet scents, I was instantly attracted to Violet Chocolatier by PK Perfumes. The question remained: what to expect? Certainly violet. It bursts upon the senses in all its olfactory beauty, but with one obvious missing facet : powder. This is a rich, wet violet, full of green and pretty floral with backbone. No other violet could stand up to the cacao storm with which it is paired. This cacao, accompanied by a nutmeg sprinkle, is deep and bittersweet, leaping as it swirls about the violet. It seems to resonate in my head as the violet and chocolate vibrate against each other. While the maelstrom begins to spend down, hazelnut and honey slow the tide. By this time, the violet and chocolate start to blend with a new floral-fruit accord. Fully ripe apricots contribute a shy, plaintive sweetness. Jasmine, rose and gardenia support the perfume as the heavier resins counter the green and anchor the scent. Luscious, but no gourmand, Violet Chocolatier is a satisfying and lovable new age violet for all users. I'm honored to own it.

For me this perfume has two very different phases. On the one hand, the output is totally chocolatey, but showing a dark chocolate above 85%, almost without sugar. It reminds me a bit of sammarco's bon-t chocolate. It is a powerful start with a dirty and animalistic character. Little by little, the strength of that chocolate decreases and violets appear, giving it a beautiful floral character and much more bearable. The base of the perfume is Amber with a woody touch although what stands out the most is as its name indicates the chocolate and violets, giving it a point between bitter, powdery and sweet. The drying is more fruity, being the apricot very noticeable. Worth it. Scent: 8 Longevity: 8 Projection: 6 Value for money: 5 Versatility: 6 Originality: 7 Global: 8

Oh, dear. I can see that this one is well-loved, and it was probably the PK Perfume I was most excited for. (Okay, so it tied with Cafe Diem and Zaffran, CLOSE ENOUGH.) So it pains me a little to write a review that is anything but glowing, especially given my experiences thus far with the rest of the line. Violet Chocolatier opens with a beautiful violet note. This is a fresh, "real" violet, not a powdery one, which is my personal preference. I get the sense that there are some other florals at work (namely magnolia), with hints of fruit and honey. The cacao, however, is not immediately present on my skin. Instead, it takes a good 30 minutes to develop. It's worth it when it comes in, though; it adds the scent of rich, dark chocolate to the composition. By the time I hit the hour mark, Violet Chocolatier smells exactly like a box of dark chocolate truffles next to a bushel of freshly-cut violets. But in my experience, the violet remains dominant, despite the fact that this fragrance is labeled as a gourmand. After that first hour of development, Violet Chocolatier becomes incredibly linear on my skin for another 4-5 hours, eventually fading in to something that's slightly powdery (though not cloying) and very much lacking in gourmand notes. The relative linearity and average longevity of this fragrance already make it an anomaly for Kiler's line. Add to that that Violet Chocolatier projects less than his other works. I'd label the sillage "soft," since people had to get right up against me to smell it on my skin, though you can get more of a moderate sillage if you apply it heavily. I don't think the sillage is particularly a BAD thing for this scent, though, because I think it suits the skin well. It's the kind of smell I can imagine being made in to body creams and soaps. Overall, Violet Chocolatier struck me as one of the most mediocre fragrances in the line. However, my experience with PK Perfumes is that Kiler's "mediocre" work is the equivalent to most house's best pieces. This is in no way a terrible perfume; it just didn't perform on my skin the way it did on these other reviwers', and it didn't wow me like most of the PK line.