One of my favorite underrated fragrance houses is the Italian line, Carthusia. Two of their fragrances are my favorite warm-weather fragrances, Uomo and Numero Uno. Carthusia has limited distribution in the US and so it was one of the things I was looking forward to when I attended Esxence 2011 in Milan. I wasn’t disappointed when Shannon Drake of Intertrade Europe introduced me to the fragrances I hadn’t tried from Carthusia.

 

 

 

One of those undiscovered, to me, fragrances felt like it had the potential to be another summertime winner for me. Unfortunately it was the end of March when I was trying it and I just knew it would be better in the heat a few months later. Just over the last week the weather has turned to mid-summer 90-degree days and I remembered this fragrance I thought would be good. I rummaged through my Esxence sample stash and found the little box which had Carthusia Corallium on the side and waited to see if my intuition was right.

 

 

According to the press release Corallium is meant to evoke a fresh breeze across the Isle of Capri. In many ways all Carthusia fragrances seem to be inspired by Capri in one way or the other. One thing I’ve admired about this inspiration is almost all of the Carthusia fragrances have something of an aquatic component about them without going overboard and Corallium fits that description. The promised breeze brings an herbal woody quality to my nose and it is a nice combination.

 

 Corallium opens with bergamot and mandarin and the muted citrus aspect is made sweeter with the addition of myrrh and made more herbal with bay laurel. The opening is like a dry breeze making its way through the citrus grove as all of these notes are kept fairly modest. The middle of Corallium takes some patchouli over a healthy slug of cedar and it is here where I get a bit of an aquatic facet along with the clean woodiness. The base is musk with a return to the herbal as sage adds to the animalic ending.

Carthusia Corallium has average longevity and above average sillage.

I don’t know if it is that all of the Carthusia fragrances are inspired by a Mediterranean island where the weather is always warm but they just seem to fill my summer sweet spot almost perfectly. Corallium will be joining Uomo and Numero Uno as part of this summer’s rotation, for me.

Disclosure: This review was based on a sample provided by Intertrade Europe.

–Mark Behnke, Managing Editor

(Michelyn Camen, EIC and Art Direction-All paintings by August Macke)

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