There are so many reasons I am drawn to perfume. Scent often has the ability to evoke a specific time or place in my life. It also can just be a thing of ephemeral beauty which just requires re-application to enjoy again. It also can create a landscape of olfactory components which create a vivid sense of something tangible. There are very few fragrances that can do all of these things at the same time. Even if a fragrance can do all of these things it is even more rare that it excels at accomplishing them. One which does manage to do all of these at an extremely high level is 2006’s The Different Company Sel de Vetiver by perfumer Celine Ellena.

Mme Ellena is the daughter of Jean-Claude Ellena and like the children of any parent who choose to work in the same field as a parent she could have found it difficult to make her own reputation. What is so great about Sel de Vetiver was that on only the second fragrance that she made for The Different Company she displayed a style that would serve her for years to come. She has a style which does share some similarities to her famous father’s compositions but Mme Ellena’s perfumes always feel more real to me, more like a still life painting. For Sel de Vetiver her goal was to use as a focal point an accord of “salt drying on skin after swimming in the ocean”. As someone who grew up on the ocean and the beach that is a smell I know very well. It was how I smelled on an almost daily basis as a kid playing in the ocean. As an adult I love to lie on a beach towel feeling the salt slowly crystallize on my skin as it dries in the sun and, if there is a breeze, to eventually blow away. This accord in Sel de Vetiver is almost photorealistic in its quality and it is a thing which no other perfumer that I have encountered has been able to recreate as truly.

Celine Ellena

Before getting to that accord Mme Ellena lets grapefruit, cardamom, and the grassier facets of vetiver create an accord of grassy sunniness. The “salt drying on skin” accord comes next. What is so unexpected here is the slight whiff of iodine she has incorporated, it is never intrusive it just feels like a part of the reality she is trying to present. The base notes consist of the woodier nature of vetiver paired with the heavier beats of patchouli remind me of gazing out into the ocean and looking at the depths and promising myself I would be back tomorrow.

Sel De Vetiver lasts as long as a full day at the beach on my skin and has above average sillage.

I imagine it is obvious that Sel De Vetiver has been a summer staple for me almost from the moment I first smelled it. I often don’t think it is really summer until I spray some on for the first day the thermometer heads to the upper reaches of its scale. No matter when I wear Sel de Vetiver it is a memory, a beauty, a landscape, and most of all a masterpiece.

Disclosure: This review is based on a bottle that I purchased.

–Mark Behnke, Managing Editor