Robert Piguet
A unique visual signature based on accords, character, and seasonality
The angelica root arrives first, its green-bitter, almost gin-like quality immediately sharpened by pepper's crackling heat and nutmeg's aromatic warmth. There's an herbal, slightly medicinal edge that feels bracing rather than welcoming, like pushing through heavy curtains into an incense-filled room where sunlight barely penetrates.
The frankincense takes centre stage with its resinous, church-like presence, weaving through tobacco that smells of dry leaves and faintly tarry richness rather than sweetness. Iris adds a powdery, earthy rootiness that reinforces the composition's austerity, creating a triptych of smoke, spice, and mineral coolness.
Vetiver's bitter, soil-dark character dominates alongside cedar's papery dryness, leaving a woody skeleton that's almost skeletal in its leanness. The smoke lingers as a phantom presence, with residual spice warmth barely perceptible beneath the parched, contemplative base.
Casbah is a study in monastic severity dressed in exotic spice, a fragrance that eschews the opulent, fruity orientals of modern perfumery for something altogether more ascetic. Aurélien Guichard has crafted what feels like the olfactory equivalent of a shadowed colonnade: cool stone walls warmed by distant braziers, frankincense smoke threading through air thick with the green bite of angelica root. The opening is arrestingly medicinal—that angular, almost camphorous quality of angelica collides with black pepper's volatile heat and nutmeg's warm rasp, creating an ecclesiastical spiciness that recalls both Moroccan souks and medieval apothecaries. As the frankincense blooms, it brings with it a resinous, slightly lemony astringency that never quite softens, anchored by tobacco that reads as cured leaf rather than sweet vanillic comfort. The iris here is dusty and rooty, amplifying rather than prettifying the composition's austere bones. What emerges is a smoke-wreathed woody structure where vetiver's earthy bitterness and cedar's dry pencil shavings create a base that feels parched, sun-bleached, deliberate. This is for those who find most fragrances cloying, who want their spices sharp rather than sugared. It suits scholars and iconoclasts equally, worn best when the air carries a chill and you're seeking something that commands space without seduction. Casbah doesn't ingratiate—it declares.
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3.9/5 (94)