White Lotus

I can’t name a perfumer handling lotus accords better than Teone Reinthal at the moment. The aroma of lotus has proven to be very elusive to perfumers, much like a true tea accord that so many have failed to get right. Not Reinthal. The complex little floral with its aquatic muguet facets intermingling with indolic jasmine is... well... just that: complex, and hard to get right. Though the actual white lotus material in White Lotus has a brief shelf life, the perfume takes you on a roller coaster journey through its numerous facets, deconstructing the aroma before our noses, from breathtaking high notes to rumbling mids and basses back up to breathtaking highs. The first wave is the roller coaster going upwards to those peak highs with fizzy tropical citruses, aquatics, creamy and fleshy florals, some indolic florals, and pink and jammy ones too from yuzu, lotus, osmanthus, tuberose, and muguet. It’s an aquatic floral amalgam that would make Edmond Roudnitska blush. The roller coaster goes down quite quickly to the mid notes of woody spices and yellow florals that are quite tannicky in texture and give a feeling of lights being dimmed. Anise, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves are sprinkled over the honeyed earthiness of mimosa. Then we come back up again to sandalwood and oud, but not in the way I’ve ever smelled them before. There is a wide spectrum of creamy and resinous earthy wood aromas of the two, for sure, but the bright and piquant citrusy notes in this final section is quite unique. It is so bright and floral it calls to mind a highly citrusy jasmine - certainly not the dense floral aspects we are used to with sandalwood or oud. Uplifting, bright, energizing, and gorgeous. It isn’t until reaching the final skin scent, which for this wearer was more than 12 hours later across three experiences, that the aromatic and reverberating woody aromas of the sandalwood and oud finally have full stage presence and keeping to the theme of stunning highs and lows. White Lotus is a trip from start to finish, and achingly beautiful throughout. Reinthal’s materials give it heft and richness yet it manages to levitate and swirl through the air like the whoosh of a roller coaster. Twists and turns abound, and you’re never quite sure what’s going to come next, but it's always a delight. Excellent work.

Green & semi-aquatic in the opening, then becomes increasingly floral while staying fresh & gentle with a touch of spice and a hint of that signature(?) bitterness by the perfumer.

Bitter and stanky on opening, not at all what I was expecting from the name. That pepper oud really makes this so incredibly bitter, the incense sweaty, and the stank is the same as what I get from florals leaning almost unbearably indolic. It’s a pungent one, smells like a type of BO, just not the grapefruit/guava type. Normally love tuberose notes but this is not a great take on it. After half an hour everything else fades and tuberose is at the forefront. It’s reminding me a lot of Do Son at this point, but I prefer Do Son and don’t want to have to go through this opening every time.