Musc Kalirii

Bergamot goes in bright and comes out imperial.

Citrus and orange blossom start it catchy and quick. Jasmine draws them together. Then musk, vanilla and sandalwood come in from below, intense and profound where the top was fast, and the two fuse into something hypnotic.

Power is the register, and it shows in how little the ending moves. Bigarade, cypriol, eucalyptus, gaiac wood, labdanum, vetiver and patchouli do the holding, which is a lot of dry material for something this hypnotic.

Maison Incens is a French house built out of a book. Philippe Constantin was born in Cameroon to a French father and a Moroccan mother, grew up in Casablanca, and went to France at eighteen to study economics and international law. The plan was an international organisation and work for people in need. Meeting Jean Claude Gigodot ended that. The house is named for Constantin's father, who left behind a compilation of paintings on leather and stories told in smell.

The releases are the olfactory signature of that book. Each belongs to an opus in the story of Artganis, an unknown civilisation whose life is ruled by smell. The Artganians travel and bring back what they find, and the opuses follow them: their own endemic essences, then the Morocco they settled in, then the divinatory arts they watched, then the legendary earthly materials themselves.