Sadanne

I passed judgement on Sadanne, and I suffered as a result of it. My previous experiences with Slumberhouse have left me with a what I thought was a good idea of what the brand "is"; dark, thick, sinister potions of esoteric evocation. "They all smell like something a neolithic cave wizard concocted out of rare precious herbs and balsams" I thought, both pigeonholing the brand and putting a profoundly annoying image into the world. Surely I have no need to try the goofy, light-colored strawberry fragrance. Embarrassingly, I found myself assuming that this was just some mandatory niche house "feminine" scent, amongst a line of powerful unisex nectars we have the odd man out, a strawberry-gummi and champagne fragrance... Upon finally getting Sadanne in a sample pack from the brand however, I was shocked to find a deep, animalic undertone within it. The ambergris gives a salty, musky, almost bad-breath-like fuzziness to an otherwise confectionary strawberry note. And as the trolli-berry decadence begins to wear off, a tart, boozy wine note appears. This of course intermingles with a very subtle rose (rose petals is an apt image), and the entire thing gives off this sinister atmosphere... Somehow with this playful, idiosyncratic stack of notes, Josh Lobb has captured some oddly specific vibe. Theres something decadently hedonistic about it, while simultaneously carrying with it a sour sharpness, reminding you that every good drunk is followed by a hangover, every 2 AM entire strawberry rhubarb pie-and-champagne binge is followed by heartburn and an upset stomach. Theres a sinister extra-dimensionality to this that I think is the actual essence of the brand; a sort of dialog within the structure of the fragrance. Elsewhere the scale is colossal (like with the implied boreal threat of Norne) or startlingly microscopic (with the baubles and paraphernalia of Baque). Maybe It's not always a threat (New Sibet is like waking up and realizing you're the last person on earth ...and Kiste is the beauty of the sun moving just close enough to the Earth to assuredly destroy it) but Slumberhouse scents always seem to "say" something. Theres an implication to them...Sadanne, it's at a very human scale. It feels dissociated. 8.5/10

This is specific to the 2022 version, as a caveat, but Sådanne singlehandedly changed my mind about ambergris in fragrance. That note usually repels me, but holy moly - this whip-leathered, musky, delicious ambergris absolutely knocked my socks off. I am beginning to understand the hushed reverence and devotion that surrounds the name of Slumberhouse. There's plenty going on in this one - the delicious, relentless rose-strawberry duet is operatic and perilously sweet as it slithers against the wicked black leather of the ambergris. It's so easy to gorge myself on this one - sticky red juice running down the wrist, and a "Roses of Heliogabalus" avalanche of petals make for a bacchanalian party all the way through. With this kind of sweet, fruited excess, you'd think it might become too much of a good thing, cloying and nightmarish - no. All I want of Sådanne is more, more, more. Drown me in it. Bind me in that irresistible ambergris leather and get me ever more drunk on that petaled wine. Just delicious. Eventually, a thorny, deep pine emerges, heady and naturalistic and gloriously resinous and sticky. It plays beautifully with the ambergris, and maintains the strong framework needed to balance the riotously sweet roses and berries. Longevity and projection are staggering, too. I sprayed it on in the morning and it lingered through the afternoon of the following day. Even the room I sprayed it in held Sådanne's shadow for days after. Just absolutely wild - granted, I have a pretty sensitive nose, but this kind of performance was totally unprecedented. It's got the relentless performance levels of some of those dynamic 80s powerhouses like Opium and Giorgio - but glorious Sådanne doesn't fatigue me in the least, as the aforementioned often do. While I never expected to enjoy a fragrance so perilously sweet, or so prominently featuring ambergris, of all things - I'm so delighted I gave this one a shot. I don't ever wish to be without it. It's not a casual wear, it's not a conservative choice, and it's definitely not a safe blind buy - but it is a rapturous, hedonistic experience that leaves me dazed, delighted, and brazenly begging for more.

Without seeing the notes in advance, my first thoughts were that Sadanne smelled like white wine with something very fruity. Maybe like a mediocre-quality rosé or a strawberry wine. It smelled like fermented strawberries, that lovely scent (note sarcasm) when you buy a crate and leave them out too long, and they go bad. Seemed more dry than sweet, but as I continued to scrutinize, I decided the sweetness was perfectly balanced. Initially I thought the fermented fruit was off-putting, yet it intrigued me too. I was so impressed with my first experience with Slumberhouse that I wondered why they would create a linear fruity perfume such as Sadanne. This burning question is the reason I let it slowly unfold on my skin. There simply had to be more to it. It was worth the wait. An animalic note caught me off guard and totally threw my nose off. I had to smell it over and over again because I wondered if I was really smelling something animalic or if it was my imagination, but it continued to grow stronger. So then I had fermented, animalic strawberry. It was challenging and odd, as strawberries and wine are deliciously edible, but a dirty animal's funk is not. In the big picture, Sadanne smells wonderfully carnal. And that is not a description I ever thought I would use to describe a predominantly strawberry perfume. I sniffed my wrist all day long (lasting time was easily 24 hours, through a night of sleep), and Sadanne grew on me to the point where I want a full bottle. This is art! It's not your run-of-the-mill fruity perfume by any means. A perfumer who is not only able to come up with such an odd combination of notes that actually work well together but who succeeds in taking what could have been a Paris Hilton perfume and turns it into a whole new genre that I would like to refer to as "fruity-animalic" most certainly has captured my attention. Bravo! Very well done!

An intoxicating chameleon of a scent. Sådanne opens with a bizarre combination of deep, sticky-sweet berry-rose, syrupy booze and a counterpoint of thin, arctic, coniferous resin. The icy resin pulls the scent up and prevents it from entering sugar-bomb territory and is truly very beautiful, shimmering gently above the composition, like glass or ice. A scent so 'high pitched' it sits almost out of reach, like the eerie, breathy crystalline sound a human hears from a dog whistle. Forgive my strange metaphors here, but Sådanne is not an easy scent to explain. The notes listed are certainly present, but don't smell anything at all like I expected. This is a case where the odd, (and slightly wanky), press release actually explains the scent much more accurately than the actual notes. The notes are fairly linear, with the only major change being a shattering of the icy aurora playing out above into something gentler, less biting as a dark, animalic vibe kicks in about half way through the wear-time and again - prevents the ever-present red-berries from straying into teenage girl territory. Sillage and longevity are equally as confusing to me. Sådanne seems to shimmer in an out of focus, almost in a drunken fashion. It seems to all but disappear for a while, only to rear up again, loud and slurred out of nowhere. I initially thought longevity was about moderate, but after a few wears I've found it popping back up unexpectedly, 12 plus hours after application. In short, a wonderful, strange, ethereal monster of a frag. Drunken fruit with a rose-bud in the snow.

Oh. Wow. This is a doozy. What a beautiful fragrance (It better be, for the $$/ml) Sadanne is the link between flirtatious innocence & coy debauchery. The whole scent is an obscure juxtaposition between accords; a yin & yang type of ordeal. There is the sweet, fuzzy, effervescent half - and the animalic, lived-in, chaotic half. I semi expect this to be what an acid trip would smell like. The opening of Sadanne is complex. There are sweet, ripe strawberries soaked in white wine, or champagne. Fizzy & delicate, enveloping & romantic! Boozy, syrupy, romantic, glamorous. Combating the sweetness is a thick, dark smog of something more sinister. I'm going to attribute the sticky 'pine needles/creepy forest' feel to the ambre gris, woods, and booze - it's unique, to say the least! The drydown brings something much more wearable - a whisper of that same syrupy sweetness, and the bouncing back and forth between something dirty, old, decrepit & sticky, child-like, and sparkling... This is a wild ride, strange and haunting. I'm head over heels in love with this fragrance! There's no way to escape being lured in by it's Black-Tie-Only appeal. Best uses: Traversing around a busy city and mingling with the nightlife, wearing floor-length gowns, riding in limousines, visiting exotic countries, having a once-in-a-lifetime experience.