As someone who ends up sniffing more new releases than there are days in a year what does one do when you admire the concept but not the product?

 

Humiecki & Graef has had me confront that dilemma as I have tried each of their new releases. Humiecki & Graef was founded by Sebastian Fischenich and Tobias Mueksch. The company name comes from the first name of the founder’s grandmothers who inspired them and the fragrances are meant to be “dedicated to their memory and every aspect of it imbued with their spirit”. To accomplish this they hired two perfumers Christophe Laudamiel and Christoph Hornetz, the self-described “Les Christophes” to be the artists behind the fragrances in the Humiecki & Graef line of fragrance.

Certainly M. Laudamiel knows how to tread both sides of the perfume divide. Abercrombie & Fitch Fierce is arguably one of the most commercial fragrances currently on the market. Contrast that with his composition for S-Perfumes, S-ex and you know he also has no problem finding beauty in the unusual. The compositions for Humiecki & Graef hew closer in spirit to S-ex than Fierce and that is where I’ve had my problems. The first six fragrances released by Les Christophes for Humiecki & Graef were very different takes on perfume composition and here was where I faced the issue I brought up in the opening.

While I admired that they weren’t run-of-the-mill fragrances I didn’t like any of them very much. It was a case of Les Christophes perhaps succeeding too well at re-creating the ideal of “Cubism In A Bottle” expressed on the Humiecki & Graef website. Both the art form and the fragrance based on the art  form had me admiring the artistry but left emotionally cold.

I kept walking away hoping that Les Christophes could perhaps inject a little more Fierce into their Humiecki & Graef creations. With the seventh fragrance in the Humiecki & Graef line I think they finally hit that sweet spot for me.

Bosque like all of the Humiecki & Graef fragrances are inspired by an emotion, in this case “contentment";as an aside if you ever want to read the kind of fragrance description that gave birth to Now Smell This’ Prix Eau Faux you should head over to the Humiecki & Graef website as their descriptions are so arch you wonder if they aren’t having us on a bit. Bosque like all of the fragrances in the line that preceded it had a list of notes that made me look forward to trying it but after six experiences that had left me wanting more I admit to some concern.

That concern was washed away from the earliest moments as the opening grouping of grapefruit, saffron, and vetiver was everything I could have wanted from that combination. The tart grapefruit felt almost steamed in a saffron rice note all over a smoky vetiver. This gives an almost languidly humid opening to Bosque. When I see citrus as a top note I usually think bright and shiny. Bosque’s grapefruit is cloaked in steam and smoke and thus has a weight to it that is unusual for a citrus note. The heart is signaled by a shift in the vetiver to a more dried grassy note which is identified as buffalo grass in the note list. This grassy note is paired with narcissus and primrose to give a distinctly indolic feel to the middle part of the development. A solid animalic musk is on hand to close out Bosque as both the buffalo grass and narcissus linger until the end. The pictures on the website show models tangled up in sheets and Bosque reminds me of a humid summer morning with the smells of the neighborhood wafting into my bedroom with the sheets surrounding me and it is a place I want to visit often.

Bosque has above average longevity and average sillage.

I think I got my wish in Bosque for Les Christophes to inject a little more commercial into their perfume. Bosque perches near perfectly at the pinnacle of commercial and artistic and that makes it laudable and wearable.

Disclosure: This review was based on a sample provided by First-In-Fragrance.

-Mark Behnke, Managing Editor