Le Rayon Vert

Oh For fucks sake Mr Eleven cheer up mate! 'Oh these attars are rubbish, oh these attars don't last and NONE of them have any silage' I'm reading your reviews and I can hear this whiny droning in my head. Objectively speaking now (because hopefully you can trust me to speak for EVERYONE when I say) Sultan's attars are absolutely stunning! Anyone that says otherwise is wrong. Simple as that. Do I like them all? No. Would I buy the vast majority of them? No. Are they masterfully curated in a way that you just don't get from other attar makers who don't use half as many materials or show as many 'looks' as this guy? YES! The nature of these rare and stunningly rendered materials is that they might be fleeting, and who cares, I'd rather have loved and lost... and all that. They are all STRONG to begin with and that's the main thing. This is like a dewy morning, all glistening and beaded foilage and suggestions of undergrowth, beautiful clary sage and oakmoss giving herbal, earthy textures then a mild sweetness. Then comes the wet florals of hyacinth but it's completely tamed by a robust woodiness and faint animalic, greenery. I'm surprisingly beguiled by this one because I thought it might be too floral, but it's perfect.

This opens like the Italian bitter Averna. Bitter, with a kind of chinotto, ambergris, mugwort, spicy flowers and deep green stems. There is perhaps an excess in laundry flowers but all in all I have to say that I like it. Carnation, sage, vetyver, rosewood ... are notes that I appreciate. This has many others! Particularly bitter, well done, quality, strong.

Bitter, herbal, mossy green. For those who need a cleanse from all ethyl maltol. Beautifully done, just not for me.

Just didn’t find anything interesting about this one quite a boring generic floral attar nothing of note going on, actually took it off after a few hours as i was going out and just wanted to wear something I enjoy. So a no for me. Performance washed it off after 2 hours and no sillage.

To me, the primary note that my mind runs to when thinking of, wearing, or speaking of Le Rayon Vert is of course the absolutely astounding galbanum in use here. The galbanum here displays all of the facets that one would expect to find it displaying in the myriad of 'green chypre' oriented fragrances that utilize it: bitter, reedy, sour, woody, and of course: green as all get out. The galbanum to me is surrounded by a rich and earthy oakmoss, a woody, earthy, but pleasantly balmy clarysage, with a dusty, dry and medicinal artemesia/absinthe that pairs so wonderfully with the worn, slightly smokey, slightly creamy leather. While all of this is going on there is a brilliant, dewy, soft, creamy gardenia alongside a fantastical lilly-of-the-valley that create this mouth-wateringly beautiful white floral/dewy effect that joins hand-in-hand with the bitter, medicinal, green symphony occurring right beside it. The woody effects taking place in the green portion of this composition occasionally find themselves to be amplified by the sandalwood, and smoothed out to a remarkable degree, and other times still the woody/green quality finds its song echoed in that of the vetiver. Underneath all of this, musk, patchouli and sandalwood play this magnificent three-chord progression of creaminess that remains the same, but seems so different depending upon which elements of the fragrance they play against. Throughout this whole magnificent affair, the ambergris finds itself at varying levels of play - occasionally it hearkens to the salty sea water from which it came, giving the bitter green elements a chance to sparkle, as if freshly seasoned by nature herself, and other times still the warm reds and browns give the earthy atmosphere a sweet tinge (unlike the natural and soft sweetness found at the hands of the gardenia) which pulsate underneath the green and white canopy alongside the scrumptious sandalwood, patchouli, musk combo, and once the green chypre elements which make up the full first wave of this fragrance begin drying down a couple of hours into the composition, one finds the skin scent of royalty with the ambergris, patchouli, musk, sandalwood and trace elements of gardenia and slightly smoky leather remaining for hours and hours on end - as if to accentuate you, the wearer's natural musk, and give those around you an unending desire to bite. 9/10 YT: Jess andWesh