Parfums de Marly
A unique visual signature based on accords, character, and seasonality
The frankincense hits like walking face-first into a thurible mid-swing, but that saffron cuts through the smoke with its distinctive medicinal-metallic edge, creating something simultaneously devotional and vaguely unsettling. Within minutes, you're already catching glimpses of what's beneath—a sweet, resinous darkness that promises complications.
Here comes the apple, and it's nothing like the crisp, watery fruit you'd expect—it's been stewed in rose water and brushed with oud smoke until it's sticky, ambered, jammy. The rose itself is plush rather than fresh, its indolic facets playing beautifully against the oud's woody rasp whilst that apple accord acts as unexpected glue, binding disparate elements into something cohesive and oddly edible.
The opoponax takes over completely now, its warm honey-resin character melding with amber and maltol to create a skin-scent that's pure confected comfort. What remains is sweet, close-wearing, faintly spiced—like amber beads warmed against skin that's been dusted with incense ash, the memory of fruit and roses still ghosting through the edges.
Habdan is Guillaume Flavigny's meditation on ecclesiastical opulence meeting Arabian suq indulgence. The opening frankincense doesn't simply whisper of church incense—it roars with saffron's leathery-metallic bite, creating an immediate tension between sacred and profane. What follows is brilliantly unexpected: as that resinous cloud begins to lift, a glossy red apple emerges, its tart sweetness colliding with rose and oud in a way that shouldn't work but absolutely does. The apple reads less 'fresh fruit bowl' and more 'rose-oud pomander studded with cloves', its natural sugars amplified by the maltol in the base until the whole composition takes on an almost candied quality.
This is the scent of someone who wears kohl-rimmed eyes and cashmere with equal nonchalance, who understands that true luxury lies in contrasts rather than coordination. The opoponax adds a honeyed, almost balsamic warmth that keeps the amber from sliding into generic territory, whilst the oud—mercifully—remains a supporting player rather than demanding centre stage. It's sweet, yes, unapologetically so, but the opening spice accord provides enough backbone to prevent it from becoming cloying.
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4.2/5 (517)