Olfactive Studio
A unique visual signature based on accords, character, and seasonality
The elemi delivers an immediate citrus-pine sharpness that's almost medicinal, whilst bergamot adds a fleeting brightness before the frankincense surges forward with its green, peppery smoke. It's bracing and austere, like stepping into a cold stone chapel where incense has been burning for hours, the air still thick with resinous vapour.
The benzoin Siam emerges with its ambery, vanilla-touched warmth, but the musk keeps everything close to the skin, creating an intimate veil rather than projection. The frankincense remains central, now softened and rounded, whilst the spice accord intensifies—there's something almost cumin-like in its body, an animalic edge that adds unexpected depth to the otherwise cerebral composition.
What remains is predominantly that bitter vetiver-oakmoss pairing, earthy and slightly fungal, with the cedarwood providing a dry, pencil-shaving astringency. The resins have settled into a quiet hum on the skin, smoke-tinged and close, like the smell of your own skin after spending an afternoon in a woodworker's studio where frankincense has been burning in the corner.
Autoportrait is a study in austere elegance, where resinous incense meets the forest floor in a composition that refuses easy categorisation. Nathalie Lorson has crafted something deliberately stark here—the elemi and frankincense create a cathedral-like opening that's simultaneously peppery and clean, whilst the benzoin Siam adds a subtle vanilla sweetness that never tips into gourmand territory. This is woody fragrance as architectural statement rather than comfort blanket, with the oakmoss and vetiver providing a bitter, almost medicinal earthiness that grounds the more ethereal resins. There's smoke, but it's the smell of extinguished church candles rather than fireside; there's spice, but it reads more as cold pepper bite than warm cinnamon embrace.
The musk here acts as a grey wash over everything, creating a skin-like intimacy that prevents the composition from floating away entirely into abstract territory. It's the olfactory equivalent of a charcoal self-portrait—all dramatic shadow and negative space, with the cedarwood providing a pencil-dry woodiness that emphasizes texture over lushness. This is for those who find conventional woody fragrances too polite, too finished. It wears like an artist's linen shirt marked with paint and resin, suited to gallery openings in converted warehouses or solitary walks through winter woodlands. Uncompromising and quietly confident, Autoportrait doesn't seduce so much as it commands respect—a fragrance that trusts you to come to it rather than reaching out to please.
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