BACK TO BLACK

1/21/18

Bergamot. Saffron. Nutmeg. Cardamom. Coriander. Raspberry. Chamomile. Olibanum. Honey. Cedar. Oak. Tobacco. Patchouli. Almond. Vanilla. Labdanum. 

Back to Black, presented By Kilian as an aphrodisiac fragrance, is robust, sultry-sweet, and bursting with fragrant intrigue. The emboldening tones of the perfume reveal a latent discomfort with eroticism among certain factions of the scent-wearing community.  All notes are given nuance by a beckoning finger of honey, but in a very cleverly suggestive manner. Find a raspberry, smeared and ravished. Find a post-coital vanilla. Find an almond and choke it till it quivers. Then take the whole gasping lot and drizzle honey everywhere. If I want my sweet little honey bear fragrance that delights and appeases, I would choose Ginestet’s Botrytis. But Back to Black is taunting and perverse.

Opening with a pungent burst of powder and chamomile before the sweeter accords of vanilla and berries hit the nose, it is a ‘big’ perfume, difficult for some to digest, and goes on and on. Oddly, it has often made me think of a blue-veined cheese that has been left stinking on a sideboard, taking almost too long to subside at a full 12 hours on my over-yielding skin. Think about it as shoes. What woman has not uttered the words, “I am dying to take off my heels!” after a night out? It becomes a single-minded desire to rip the offending items from your feet. So imagine hours on this stilettoed scent wave and how you must ride it out until you are permitted the soft fleece of the slipper, being the final comforting tobacco dry down.

Rating: 4 exhausted honey bees resting on the carpel of a flower.