Sauvage

The pepper trinity detonates immediately—Sichuan's citric tingle, pink's fruity warmth, and Calabrian bergamot's petitgrain edge creating a spiced cloudbursts that's almost effervescent. There's a metallic brightness here, aldehydic and sharp, that makes your nose prickle before the aromatic wave begins to build beneath.

Lavender emerges not as a solo note but as part of an aromatic complex, star anise adding an anisic sweetness whilst elemi contributes a piney, resinous backbone. Nutmeg's dusty warmth softens the composition's edges, pulling it away from aquatic freshness towards something that registers as genuinely spiced rather than merely 'fresh spicy'.

Ambroxan's saline warmth dominates, that familiar grey-amber glow wrapping around cedar's pencil-shaving dryness and a remarkably clean patchouli. Vanilla and coumarin blend into an abstract sweetness that hovers at skin level, creating that 'expensive skin' effect—polished, groomed, unmistakably there but never edible.