If Libertine’s fragrance Fin de Siècle is any indication, this house will become a bright star in fragrance night sky in the not too distant future. It isn’t as if there is something revolutionary going on in the ingredients—its ingredients as listed on Libertine’s website are: black currant, rose, patchouli and oakmoss. Fragrantica lists 8 notes, none unusual. But from opening sniff to dry down this one is one of these intoxicatingly fruity, floral, mossy, patch scents that can compete with almost any of the many scents that include these ingredients. I think it is the black currant that helps move it to the higher echelons of the rose heavy fragrances. Since I have just received the bottle early today, I have been trying to find either a useful metaphor or another scent to compare it to. Since many have smelled or tried a sample of Portrait of a Lady, I will invoke it as it has black current, rose, and patchouli. It also has a very long list of other notes. It is much more complex and for some this is what makes it world class. I love both for the overabundance of subtle notes and the high quality of the ingredients. Fin de Siècle is much more in your nose from the get-go. Some might find this both too much and not enough. While its palette may not come close to POAL it still leaves me with a depth of heady and carefully chosen ingredients. It is supposed to invoke the decadence of the time and character of Oscar Wilde and the art for art’s sake era. Provocative, self-assured, paradoxical and brilliantly witty in Oscar, more somber in the likes of Walter Pater. I think this scent is somewhere in between those two, reaching for the art of fragrance while still acknowledging the desire to shock. Sample first, as it is powerful and long-lasting.
