Carner
A unique visual signature based on accords, character, and seasonality
The mint and cardamom hit simultaneously, creating a peculiar hot-cold sensation that's almost medicinal in its intensity. Saffron adds its iodine-like tang whilst the pepper crackles around the edges, and there's a fleeting moment where you can smell each individual spice before they begin their inevitable collision.
Jasmine sambac emerges with its characteristic mothball richness, now completely saturated in cinnamon oil and nutmeg's warm, slightly narcotic sweetness. The coriander seed adds an unexpected soapiness that shouldn't work but does, preventing the whole affair from becoming a one-note spice bomb, whilst the florals lend an almost resinous, balsamic quality to the composition.
What remains is sandalwood and vanilla locked in amber, with benzoin providing a caramelised, slightly powdery finish that's more incense-church than patisserie-sweet. The musk and cedar create a skin-like base that feels worn-in and lived-through, with faint echoes of all that spice lingering like aromatic ghosts in wool.
Rima XI reads like a spice merchant's fever dream, where Sonia Constant has taken the entire contents of a Levantine souk and set them alight with mint and cardamom. This isn't a polite, tea-time spice blend—it's proper, sweat-inducing heat tempered by the cooling slap of nana mint against skin. The Guatemalan cardamom arrives with its characteristic eucalyptus-tinged sharpness, immediately locked in combat with saffron's leathery, medicinal bite, whilst Madagascan pepper adds a woody, almost citric rasp that keeps the opening from tipping into cloying territory.
What makes this composition sing is how Constant handles the heart: jasmine sambac's indolic richness shouldn't work with this much cinnamon and nutmeg, yet somehow the flower's animalic facets amplify rather than clash with the spice cabinet intensity. The coriander adds a strange, soapy-green counterpoint that feels almost transgressive. This is a fragrance for those who find most 'spicy' scents disappointingly timid, who want their vanilla to arrive bruised and slightly charred rather than pristine. By the base, Australian sandalwood's creamy, almost lactonic quality merges with benzoin's vanilla-adjacent sweetness to create something that hovers between Oriental gourmand and full-blown incense territory.
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3.5/5 (111)