The Merchant Of Venice
A unique visual signature based on accords, character, and seasonality
The blackcurrant bud cracks open with unexpected tartness, immediately softened by a violet so powdery it feels like breathing in crushed iris root. Pink pepper adds a gentle tremor of spice that keeps the opening from settling into pure sweetness, creating tension between tart and creamy that arrests attention.
The white blossoms emerge with an almost soapy, aldehydic character—mahonial and rosyfolia combine to create something genuinely unusual, evoking powdered skin and old-fashioned florals. The tonka bean weaves through, adding a honeyed warmth that makes the composition suddenly intimate and skin-like, as if the fragrance is becoming part of you rather than sitting atop your skin.
Cedar and sandalwood finally assert themselves, but gently, appearing through a haze of remaining tonka sweetness and that persistent powdery base. The composition becomes almost abstract here—more suggestion than statement—with Sylkolide creating a creamy, barely-there veil that clings close to skin. What remains is less a fragrance than a memory of one.
The Merchant of Venice's My Pearls unfolds as a powdery floral that leans decidedly toward the luminous rather than the sultry. Olivier Pescheux constructs something deliberately soft-focus here—the blackcurrant bud absolute arrives with a tart snap, immediately tempered by violet's creamy, almost talcum-like embrace. Pink pepper dances alongside, offering just enough prickling warmth to prevent the composition from dissolving into mere sweetness.
What emerges most distinctly is the interplay between the white blossoms and that mahonial base note—an unusual choice that lends an almost soapy, slightly anisic quality to the floral heart. The rosyfolia amplifies this effect, creating something reminiscent of vintage face powder, the kind your grandmother might have kept in a mirrored compact. It's deliberately nostalgic, gently retro, yet without the cloying density such compositions often possess.
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Histoires de Parfums
3.9/5 (279)