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For today’s top ten perfumes 2020, Senior Editor Lauryn Beer and Editor dana sandu explore the fragrances that brought them comfort during a year that was,at its best, uncomfortable. Their picks have only two commonalities; they both chose fragrances from young perfumer Aggelos Balamis and Antonio Gardoni in their ten perfumes of 2020.

There’s no point in belabouring what a ridiculous, hard year this has been. All the days when getting dressed seemed complicated, breakfast difficult, and writing nearly unimaginable. I’ve searched many a corner for talismans to ward off the ache of separation, the sameness of the weeks, the worry about a world suddenly unfamiliar and hostile. And in the perfumes listed below I found respite. These fragrances helped me get through some very dark days with the occasional smile. I thank their creators profoundly – for every bad dream their creations warded off, every concept of beauty they revealed, and every moment of optimism they gift-wrapped for me.

Lauryn’s Top Ten Perfumes of  2020

Despite my irritating sense that the weather of 2020 was permanently grey, the perfumes the past year were Cezanne baskets of yellows and golds (mimosa has really been having a moment), with perfumes that seemed to hold the sun and light. Visions of favourite faraways, abstractions in warm palates, golden bouquets full of resins – these are some of the fragrances that sang me to sleep over these last 12 months (in alphabetical order).

Anatole Lebreton Fleur Cachée: It is no secret that I am a big fan of Anatole Lebreton’s work. His perfumes unfold like the turned, gilded-edged pages of fairy tales. His fragrances are dreamy, inventive and quite unlike anyone else’s. In 2020, Lebreton brought us a non-gourmand vanilla full of savoury smells that traced the ancient Silk Route through Asia to the New World. Fleur Cachée is an enigmatic woody fragrance that deconstructs vanilla and then mixes its resinous seeds, parchment skin and tree wood with heated Eastern spices. For lovers of vanilla who tire of the endless torrent of ice cream and cake perfumes, or those, like me, who veer from the sweet, Fleur Cachée is a vanilla for the ages.

Angelos Creations Olfactives Yassemi (Aggelos Balamis): When Aggelos Balamis gave me his samples to sniff last year in Florence, I was floored by how polished and frankly pretty his fragrances were. The finished products are impressive, but none more so than the achingly lovely Yassemi, a multifaceted, jasmine-dominant floral the fearlessly marries delicate notes such as heliotrope and angelica with bombshells like ylang, smooths them out with woods and resins, and then holds them in glittering balance. Yassemi is so graceful and verdant that it smells like it sprang just moments ago from the warm earth of a wild Mediterranean garden.

Bogue OOOH (Antonio Gardoni): OOOH is 2020’s precioussss, made in only a handful of bottles, and one of the most breathtakingly gorgeous mimosas on the planet. Created for CaFleureBon’s 10th anniversary (a collaboration with modern perfumery’s mad genius, Antonio Gardoni, Editor-in-Chief Michelyn Camen, photographer Alex C. Musgrave and illustrator Massimo Alfaioli) OOOH is a kaleidoscope of mimosa, rose, citrus, and resins that is pollenous, grassy, herbal, a bouquet of fantastical Marc Chagall flowers pouring from yellow skies on a pale day. I saved this for the days when tears came quicker than sundown; it made me feel the dawn was worth rising for.

DSH Perfumes Le Serval (Dawn Spencer Hurwitz): Dawn Spencer Hurwitz has had an astonishingly productive year, producing a seemingly never-ending flow of stunning scents including her three iris fragrances, her Frida series and, my favourite of all, Le Serval, a luscious, animalic. honey-soaked floral inspired by the elegant serval cat. With its airy opulence and harmonious construction, Le Serval is sensual yet lighthearted, rich but ethereal, exotic yet familiar, a retro-tinged modern that smells timeless.  ÇaFleureBon Top Ten Perfumes of 2020.

Folie a Plusiers For Electra (Mark Buxton): Folie a Plusieurs, an olfactive art gallery, integrates fragrance with creative forms including cinema, art, music and literature. For Electra is based on a project between the brand, perfumer Mark Buxton and electronic band Pierce With Arrow that creates a “sonic narrative” using scent and music to portray an oblique tale of love, rejection, loss and melancholy. To map a fragrance to a piece of electronic music is a challenge that could sink lesser perfumers. But in the hands of the ever-brilliant Mark Buxton, For Electra is a perfume of unsettling beauty. For Electra is trancelike, a perfume from a strange twilight garden where woodsy, green florals, incense and immortelle sway and dip of the music. As the music intensifies, so does the perfume. Its notes twirl about each other in skewed loveliness, merging and separating repeatedly. Lovely.

Masque Milano Madeleine (Fanny Bal): Masque Milano’s first foray into gourmand territory is built around two central accords of creamy white florals and chestnut-cocoa. Interpreted with great style by young IFF perfumer Fanny Bal, Madeleine captures l’esprit de la Parisienne in a stunning fragrance that marries café with bouquet and turns them into something, deliciously, unexpectedly wonderful. Bal wisely eschews sugar in favour of textural smells that evoke la patissiere without being literal. Pastry and coffee notes are undergirded by buttery florals that complement the gourmand aspects in a sophisticated way. Utterly delicious, perfectly pitched between sweet, floral and creamy notes, Madeleine is one of the best gourmands of the last decade.

Olivier Durbano Aram (Olivier Durbano): Soulful Olivier Durbano’s paean to the Syria that was, is a vibrant, woody-green scent that sings of ancient stones, lapping water, and the memories of a place beloved. Punctuated by bitter tops notes of artemisia, grapefruit and green tea and flowery-citric verbena, Aram travels on a rooty ascent into green leaf and loam before arriving at the shores of Latakia. There, the parched odor of cracked bone and wave-worn wood, the cool minerality of ground stones, the savor of dried grass and of incense give Aram an old smell, of time before time. But the downy rose heart they surround gives the fragrance poignancy and a touch of sweet floralcy. My favourite of Durbano’s perfumes since 2015’s Chrysolithe.

photo Roberto Greco

Perris Mimosa Tanneron (Jean-Claude Ellena): Jean-Claude Ellena’s watercolour mosaic of fragile florals seems to float even they while they caress the skin. Mimosa Tanneron is a stunning mimosa perfume: ethereal yet realistic, like fresh-cut mimosa blossoms whose fleeting scent carries and fades with the vagaries of a breeze. M. Ellena perfectly captures mimosa’s delicate loveliness but leads it away from the overt powderiness this flower is often associated with, bringing out its notes of vanilla, cucumber, rain, candied angelica and green almond. M. Ellena gives us the smell of sunlight and shadow of a brilliant Riviera afternoon in spring. Mimosa Tanneron is as poignantly beautiful as first love.

Prosody London Pizzicato (Keshen Teo): Organic, all-natural line Prosody first caught my eye (and nose) at Pitti Fragranze in 2019. The invention of the talented Keshen Teo, this is a line worth delving into. Teo’s fragrances have a distinctive signature I haven’t quite put my finger on, but they are beautifully composed. Prosody’s new line of colognes is perfect for hot weather but also for long grey days when you yearn to be at a seaside or in fruit tree grove. My favourite of the lot is the stunning Pizzicato Bliss, studded with golden fruit notes of quince and fig splashed with citrus. A couple of spritzes makes me feel like I’ve wandered into the Garden of Eden just before it all went wrong.

Sultan Pasha Chypre Chrysantheme (Sultan Pasha): London-based Sultan Pasha gets my MVP award for keeping me laughing throughout the year with his endlessly hilarious Facebook posts, and for his amazingly generous heart. Good thing I also happen to like his perfume! This year’s Chypre Chrysantheme is an absolutely gorgeous attar with an incredibly realistic chrysanthemum top note that swirls luxuriously around three different roses, green stem, and velvety resins, all naughtied up with a dollop of civet. One of the most sophisticated, gorgeous chypres out there.

–Lauryn Beer, Senior Editor

 

dana’s Top Ten Perfumes of 2020

There are no qualifiers for 2020, no further self-pity to allow ourselves, no explanations and no encouragements that still ring sincere; this has been a helluva year, and I, for one, was left convinced that to be confined in a dungeon is pure dung. (Therefore, I declare: anyone still wanting to be a princess and I have absolutely nothing in common).

In 2019 I had too much to go through and too little experience at harsh, declarative, top-10 critiques; in 2020 there was far less to review (no events, bought less, swapped less, accepted less gifted samples), way less time to revise the samples I *did* acquire (so much so that at least half still await to be properly tested), and—finally—way less disposition to appoint excitement to the materiality of things. The result? A very, very labored list which 1. does not include the fragrances I’ve already dedicated articles to, and 2. does no justice to the tormented fragrance industry at large, but merely reflects my own meager respites, selfish preferences, and comfort zones.

If you, like me, were stripped of the luxury of objective critique and found yourself in need of self-care, here’s my list of 2020 launches not to remember, but to help you forget.

 Francesca Bianchi Tyger Tyger (Francesca Bianchi): an oddity in Bianchi’s lineup, Tyger Tyger is movable, flowy, and hard to contain; not that one would ever want to, for its changeability that makes it beautiful, and one’s impossibility to note notes. (Sorry, I turned pretentious for a moment there; but there’s something alien/shape-shifting to this, both scary and addictive, like staring at a lava lamp). Sinuous and fluid, but powerful, Tyger Tyger trickles down the nose with many chiaroscuros built deep within: leathers and milks, sunny rays and jungledeep fruitiness, crude physicalities and innocent bliss. There’s movement and sweaty life in this, fuzzy polleny buzz, and the calm power of full-blast blossoms. Killing you softly, indeed.

 Aaron Terence Hughes Arabica (Aaron Terence Hughes): Not easy to find (for me, at least) and most certainly not easy to execute (I’m guessing), a warm lavender is precisely what drew me to this. Doubled by a most brash, tin-like, coffee-yielding accord, it somehow constitutes into a comfort fragrance that is unusual but familiar, deep but casual, and somehow young… and dearly needed in today’s (much too serious, or much too stark, or much too stiff) perfumery.

 Angelos Creations Olfactives Grace d’Orient (Aggelos Balamis): at the opposite end of Balamis’ other lovable offering (Eau de Vertu, see here) sits  Grace d’Orient—an intensely vintage, collar-shaped bit of art that not only hints at operas past, but proposes a very actual spicy adventure. Sweet, warm, familiar, and precisely beautiful, this is a just-right formula of condiments, flowers, and benzoic clarity–and a most remarkable launch for a self-taught perfumer. Chapeau.

 Annette Neuffer Chyprette (Annette Neuffer): solitude needs to hurt in order to sing, and only through song some notes vibrate in the only way they can make poetry; Annette’s typical bitter citrus is here surrounded by some of the most difficult notes to master (anisic + nutty greenery) and creates the right conjunction for spicy chypre greatness. Nothing short of painful poetry, and a full bottle yearning for pitiful me, who caught but a mere glimpse of skin testings. Santa, please take note.

Meo Fusciuni Varanasi (Giuseppe Imprezzabile) beating to its own drum and away from most of this year’s trends, Varanasi reflects Meo’s intense poetic esthetic with a future-in-the-past concoction forged to stir, and then to recenter. (So used am I to find joy and a path out carved by his most breathy compositions, that this closed, journey-on-the-inside formula took me by surprise and left me unsettled for a while. We reunited, and once I succumbed to its Eastern inspirations I started understanding its hummed, indelible, immovable magic. Think big, slow, Eastern river.

 Maison Sybarite Amber Gaze (Antoine Lie): overshadowed by its bigger, sparklier, and much more publicized sister releases of the year past, Amber Glaze brings a much, much needed tenderness to the recent roster of hardened, experimental, dark amber fragrances. Nonono, this one is gentle and caring, supporting and kind; healing like a warm chai and textural like your favorite corduroy, it sits by your side and holds your hand, unassuming and very, very nurturing. Winner of a beauty innovation award and already part of a unique selling proposition (Maison Sybarite makes water-based fragrances that hydrate and protect the skin, much like an emulsion), Amber Gaze is something to gaze—and graze—upon. A panacea.

Rasei Fort LA Whatever (Rasei Fort) labored and massaged like pretty much all others in the Rasei Fort line, this punch of a sniff is hard, deep, and, yes, as inebriated as my Californian Covid nights. Not entirely certain of the intention behind this liquorous concoction, but through vapors of fruity fermentations and aromatic wood grains I can see one thing clearly: the only *boo in this boozy concoction is that it’s limited edition. A splurge.

 D:SOL MMXVI Terram (Marie Le Febvre): a nostalgic sigh for my long-lost Mediterranean end-summers, Terram fills the need for air and salt with the same natural touch you’d have in a seaside sitting. Neither excruciatingly realistic nor intensely abstract, this rather balanced exercise in herbs and commonplace ingredients reads spacious and piney, like a coastal breeze. Freeing.

 Berceuse Allegreto 7.2 (Antonio Gardoni): This one, I have to admit, gave me the chills and, by forcing me to presence, unsettled me—until I realized that any unsettling that’s not daily-life-related is still a good distraction, and so opened myself to the crazy mindsoup Gardoni often produces. In this case, the result was a relatively wild ride which left me scorched and (temporarily, intellectually, and blissfully) vetiver’d out. FINALLY.

photo Oswald Pare

Amelia Ghaliyah Reflection (Nitish Dixit and Zakir Laskar of Dixit & Zak): Yes, I am more than clinging to the hunger I feel for the Dixit & Zak Rising Mysore 2 launch, so I admit weakness–but Ghaliyah is, in its own right, a great offering. Multifaceted rose, silky ambergris, incensy woods, creamy animalics, textural oud; nothing bashful here, nothing personal, nothing discrete or restrained— this is a tour de force of animal, spice, and everything nice, a contrasting and opulent (mixed media?) composition of permanent effect.

My meager drop is now defunct, and emptying it left me empty- I want it, I do. And so would you.

dana sandu, Editor and creator of @a_nose _nose

ÇaFleureBon Top Ten Perfumes of 2020 Draw

Thanks to the generosity of one of our 2020 Rising Stars, Aggelos Balamis there is a draw for one registered reader of your choice of either Angelos Creations Olfactives Yassemi or  Angelos Creations Olfactives  Grace d’Orient if you reside in the US, UK, EU or Canada. Please leave which one you would like to win in your comment.   What did you think of Lauryn’s Top Ten Perfumes of 2020 and your thoughts on dana’s top ten perfumes 2020. Draw closes December 31, 2020

Since Aggelos doesn’t’ have a website at this time please see his Facebook Page or email him at angelos.olfactives@gmail.com

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Part 1: Michelyn and Ermano: Overview of the “Best of Scents 2020” (there are still draws open here)

Part 2. Michelyn and Ermano: Top Ten Perfumes 2020  (Draws open here)

Part 3.  Ida and Despina: Top Ten Perfumes 2020 (Draws open here)

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