Chiseled Face
A unique visual signature based on accords, character, and seasonality
Hemlock's green-resinous blast arrives immediately, accompanied by pink pepper's peppery snap and galbanum's almost vegetable-like sharpness. Juniper adds a gin-like botanical earthiness that feels more craft-cocktail than conventional cologne, establishing an atmosphere of deliberate austerity before anything mellows.
The composition settles into a surprisingly complex middle phase where stone pine and elemi resin create an almost incense-like warmth beneath black pepper's continuing presence. Mint emerges as a cooling counterpoint, while geranium adds dried florality—the overall effect resembles a high-altitude forest lodge, resinous and slightly spiced, with enough depth to sustain interest.
The base's cedarwood and cashmere wood establish a woody foundation that grows increasingly warm as labdanum's honeyed amber emerges, creating gentle sweetness against the lingering balsam fir. By this stage, the composition has softened considerably from its austere opening, settling into something approximating comfort—though it retains sufficient resinous character to avoid ever becoming genuinely comforting.
Chiseled Face's Bay Rum is a forbidding proposition—a fragrance that feels more like stepping into a wood-panelled study than spraying cologne. Clément Salva constructs something genuinely resinous here, with Canadian hemlock and galbanum creating a sharp, almost medicinal green spine that refuses to soften. The opening salvo of pink pepper and juniper suggests bartender's bitters rather than anything conventionally pleasant, and this is precisely its appeal.
What emerges is a deeply woody composition where the heart's Siberian stone pine and elemi resin wrestle with black pepper and mint, creating a slightly astringent warmth—think crushed pine needles mixed with menthol vapours and white pepper dust. This is a fragrance for those who appreciate discomfort as a virtue, who find conventional sweetness cloying. The geranium adds a whisper of dried rose leaf, but it's merely an undercurrent beneath the dominant woody-resinous architecture.
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3.6/5 (305)