Marc-Antoine Barrois Encelade by Roberto Greco, courtesy of Maison Marc-Antoine Barrois©
Encelade, the twice giant.
Encelade, giant of myth, stellar giant, Encelade, the thrice giant indeed for it borrows its temper from its legendary namesakes, the sleeping giant that sometimes sighs under the boiling Etna and the racing moon of Saturn whose icy mantle encloses an ocean of steam. It bears their ardour and their boldness, their mythical, mythological, and telluric aspect for Encelade is still a story of Earth, though not one of wind nor fire, but of a new Earth, insouciant and dazzlingly fragrant and coloured.
Marc-Antoine Barrois and Quentin Bisch of Givaudan, July 2020 photo credit Fred Zara© courtesy of Marc-Antoine Barrois
Encelade, the thrice giant, as usual boasts an opulence to which Marc-Antoine Barrois and Quentin Bisch are known for, An opulence of materials, a plethora of nuances, and a richness in expressing a theme itself nourished by two lives of wandering and exploring nature and the Self, placing Encelade in a straight line after B683 and its evocation of The Little Prince. Once again, Marc-Antoine Barrois and Quentin Bisch have created a fragrance that even before its official release has already garnered the reputation of a must-have, borrowing an air of leather-quinoleine from the scents of yesteryear while chiselling its modernity with a juicy-sweet fruitiness.
Enceladus, courtesy of NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
In the manner of a poem, or rather of a cry or an aria straddling the lowest notes of the diatonic scale, Encelade sets forth its theme – this is a fragrance about life, a fable about nature, about a fabulous nature, its glee and its joy, the nature unwithered that once saw walking, as of two angels, Adam and Eve on endless patches of green. One imagines thick emerald and celadon canopies harvesting the rays of an imperial sun; one sees mists, these seas of grey creeping over the copper-red slopes of volcanoes and the Andes. One sees green, yes, but opulent, but generous, a green of leather, a green of woods, a green of supple vanilla, a pre-Columbian offering looking up to the gods and the afterlife with that heap of rage that makes the blood boil and the temples pulse.
Above all, in Marc-Antoine Barrois Encelade we discover an accomplished form of a theme dear to Quentin Bisch, a post-fruity Rhubarb here to exalt the greenness of a Leather that we have come to think of as terribly dark and animalic. The acidity and bitterness of the first notes verticalise a velvety and vanillic background, pulling up lesser-known facets of the well-known materials used therein and accidentally referring to the grand leather fragrances of times past. We speak not of a Cuir de Russie for there are little smoke or pyrogenic balsams, but we are still somehow taken aback by the ghostly furriness of an isobutyl quinoleine even though it is absent from the formula.
Marc-Antoine Barroise Encelade by Roberto Greco, courtesy of Maison Marc-Antoine Barrois.
Green is the leather; the leather is green – it has the texture of a long-tanned hide, a delicate sheen of Sandalwood shining over it, not overtly creamy but animalic, but acescent thanks to a delicately flaring and milky Atlas Cedarwood, distilling solar drops of space in that dense thicket of a base that overbursts with Vanilla and addictive hints of caramel.
We are indeed in the presence of this heavy and nuanced, nebulous and saturated composing style, so perfectly musical, so undeniably Bischian, so powerfully Brucknerian and so rightly Barroisienne, that turned the three previous opera into worldwide successes. This is not the first time that we have compared one of their perfumes to one of Bruckner’s works and rightly so. As Sergiu Celibidache once said: “To a normal man, time is what comes after the beginning”. To Bruckner, time is what comes after the end”. Each opus released by Maison Marc-Antoine Barrois bears this mark, this approach that is not linear but apotheotic, apocalyptic even, one informed by its own finality and which, rather than striving for it, seeks to draw something from it.
Marc-Antoine Barrois Encelade proceeds from this very unspeakable motion, its first second already knowing what comes last and thus it is no longer a matter of evolving linearly but of unwinding from within itself, of enriching itself from itself and regardless of top, heart and base notes, through Encelade one sees the beginnings of what a post-Jean Carles perfumery could perhaps be – one that evolves from its own afterglow.
Encelade by Roberto Greco, courtesy of Maison Marc-Antoine Barrois.
Three years will not have been too much to give birth to Marc-Antoine Barrois Encelade whose luminous greenness made of Rhubarb and Leather recalls the snowy and blue-scratched surface of Enceladus, a hot-and-cold explosion where the characteristic fire of the Etna meets the interstellar frost sweeping the surface of the second Enceladus while in the heart, the Atlas Cedar and Sandalwood seem like a nod to the burning skin of the giant struck down by Athena and lying under the Etna, to its life force that animates the hearts of Sicilians.
There is certainly more going on here than words can convey, for perfume remains a secret that can only be revealed by the whisper of a skin, so it will suffice for us to hammer home the fact that Encelade is the little brother in the process of surpassing the ambitions of an already legendary Ganymède.
Close-up shot of Encelade in the gardens of Versailles by hanseatic©
A green leather, yes. A soft leather. Something that remembers of the first days of all Earths, reeking of a desire to laugh. A leather of moss, a leather of incense, a leather of vanilla, a leather-fruit, yes, of rhubarb, a bitter, acidic juice, something that plumps the lips and explores the pupils. A golden leather, golden with gold, it must smell of the sun, a leather of precious and waxen woods, of Atlas Cedar and Sandalwood, that smells of that skin which you kiss, lick and worship, the skin that isn’t yours and transfigures your mornings into a glimpse of the coming days in Heaven. A sumptuous leather, that’s it, the leather of your awakening – of your resurrection.
That’s what Encelade must be.
Marc-Antoine Barrois Encelade by Roberto Greco, courtesy of Maison Marc-Antoine Barrois©
You must be life and nothing else. You must be the love of life. You must be the clinging to life. You must be what makes people want to hold on to life, to give one chance to the acts of goodness that reveal the greatness of humanity, one and only one is enough to stand up. You must be divinely human, Encelade. Gigantically human. You must rise; you must raise us up. Let us say to ourselves that there is no past without a future, that the past is already a future and that without a future we never would have been.
Notes: Rhubarb, Atlas Cedarwood, Sandalwood, Leather, Vetiver, Tonka Bean.
Disclaimers: This review was based on a sample kindly offered by Maison Marc-Antoine Barrois. All opinions are my own.
Lauryn’s review of B683 is here. Alexandre’s review of B683 Extrait here, Despina’s review of Ganymede here and Michelyn’s interview with Quentin Bisch is here
–Alexandre Helwani, Contributor
Thanks to the generosity of Marc-Antoine Barrois, we have a draw for three samples of Encelade for three registered reader as follows: One in the USA and Canada, One for the EU and one for the UK, You must register here or your comment will not count. To be eligible, please leave a comment saying what you enjoyed most about Alexandre’s review of Marc-Antoine Barrois Encelade and where you live. Draw closes 5/24/2022 What is your favorite Marc-Anotine Barrois perfume ?
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