L'arbre
Having a weekend place down in the Florida Keys when I was growing up, meant I spent a lot of time watching sunsets over the Gulf of Mexico. One of the interesting phenomenon around sunsets is the optical oddity that occurs just as the last sliver of sun is sliding beneath the horizon. What you see is a flash of green. Sometimes it is concentrated like an emerald on top of a fiery ball. Sometimes it fills the twilight sky with a burst of green. Whether the green is concentrated into a point or diffused through the sky both versions of green are beautiful. The same is true of perfume which is centered around green notes. Sometimes those notes can be concentrated and glittery, other times they can diffuse and be sheer and shimmery like a veil. The first release under the imprimatur of Belgian designer Maison Martin Margiela called Untitled manages to combine both aspects of green into one fragrance.
Perfumer Daniela Andrier was the nose behind Untitled and she has been the nose behind the Prada Nos. 1-10 and the Infusion line for Prada. For Untitled Mme Andrier manages to combine the intensity of the Nos. collection and the sheerness of the Infusion line all around galbanum as the source of green.
Maison Martin Margiela’s couture carries a layered almost off-handedly casual look but as the pictures above show those layers create an asymmertrical interesting whole. Mme Andrier seems to have taken her inspiration from that sort of tailoring and translated it into Untitled.
The opening of Untitled is a glittering concentrated galbanum that does pulse with a powerful throb. If you are not a fan of green or galbanum I think you might find this opening a bit much. I like my green and so I liked this intense shot across my olfactive bow. Complementing the galbanum in the early going is a lovely delineating bitter orange. It adds facets to the rawness of the galbanum essence which makes it all that much better.
The turn towards the heart sees a diffusion of the galbanum into a more accessible state as the greenness becomes more expansive enticing you closer to it. As you do get closer Mme Andrier adds a bit of indolic jasmine to keep things from getting too comfortable. The base starts with a lovely white musk. Some white musks reek of the laundry aisle and can kill a fragrance, for me. The white musk used by Mme Andrier in Untitled is more sensuous than anything found on aisle 6 and along with cedar and a light frankincense Untitled stays on the diffuse side straight through to the end.
Maison Martin Margiela Untitled has above average longevity and average sillage.
I’ve been testing Untitled for the last month and the weather has been ping-ponging from cool to scorching. I’ve found Untitled to be best the hotter it is. Mme Andrier’s creation has an ability to refresh while waiting for the sun to drop below the horizon.
Disclosure: This review was based on samples obtained from Saks Fifth Avenue.
–Mark Behnke, Managing Editor
Art Direction: Michelyn Camen EIC
| “Art evokes the mystery without which the world would not exist.”- Rene Magritte |