EXTRAIT D'ATELIER's product campaign. Photo Credits: Romin Favre
Perfume and jewelry have so much in common. They are to adorn us, dress us and express us. Both accessories can make the collector addictive and let go of the bags. Both perfumes and jewelry can be strong, loud and ostentatious, or silent, discreet, skin-like.
You can wear a lot of jewelry and a lot of perfume. Or quite the opposite. Most jewelry houses enrich their offer by adding fragrances to jewelry, often inspired by a specific collection, jewel or precious metal.
Before the diamond and gold decorate a beautiful neck or wrist, however, the magic of bending and cutting takes place in a jewelry workshop. A mixture of art, craftsmanship and magic, translated into the fragrance by Chiara Ronzani from the Extrait d'Atelier brand. MaÎtre Joaillier, the Master Jeweler, was among the first three studio fragrances that she launched with the perfumer Claudia Scattolini in 2016. I'm taking you to his atelier today.
Photo Credits:CharlieNose
The place is bright and quiet. Tall and spacious. It lacks coziness. This is not what this is about. All shapes are cut with precision, all lines are rather straight. The smell of freshly cut metal is in the air. So sharp it cuts across the nostrils. They are aldehydes that swirl in the air like silver filings. They open up, the first few seconds. Rach, sniff!
Perfectly metallic and acidic, they dance in the air filled with ozone that portends a beautiful violet heart. It's basically a violet leaf, green, dry and fresh, so powder is pretty much out of the question. This violet moment is very pleasant. I remember him from Eau de Cartier and a bit from this year's Original Wood DSquared2. After a while, coniferous green joins the violet green. It's a balsam fir.
It adds a milligram of sweetness and quite a lot of flavor. It soothes the sharpness of the opening a bit, but the fragrance basically maintains its dynamic, cut vitality until the end. Incense appears for a split second. I can barely sense them, but it just seems to blend in nicely with the balsamic and woodiness of the lower part of the composition. It is certainly not incense served in Arabic.
Rather simple, cool, minimalist, like the entire Master Jeweler. The base is the afore-mentioned woodiness, which is also fresh, and it is covered with pure musk. In the jewelry workshop, the furniture is made of light plywood and thin aluminum, there is no point in looking for heavy dark wood cabinets.
Photo Credits:CharlieNose
That's it. Elaborate and effusive digressions do not match this fragrance. It is very specific and well-tailored. In my opinion, it is brilliantly tailored for warm days. It offers an unusual freshness, because there is neither citrus, nor sea notes, nor mint. Yes, there is green, but of a completely different species, and freshness is as if created in a laboratory. Positioning vertically and rising upwards. After all, I have mentioned that the Extrait d'Atelier jewelry studio is a high and spacious place.
This unisex fragrance with aldehyde, ozonic, violet and wood accords is placed - like all the brand's compositions - in a lampshade-shaped bottle. "Initially, I wanted (the bottle) to be flat and square, but then I came to the conclusion that this shape - the shape of the lampshade - best reflects the idea of the studio and its closed world." - Chiara said in an interview given to me in 2019. The cap on the bottle is undoubtedly the eye-catching element.
As it turns out, it also has its own meaning: “The diagonally cut cork is another symbol I wanted. It is a repetition of the apostrophe after the letter "d" in the brand name. I use this truncated shape everywhere - in corks, on boxes, in promotional materials. It symbolizes the work tools used in the studios to personalize products. This shape, this apostrophe, has become a symbol of our brand. " - says Chiara.
Photo Credits:CharlieNose
MaÎtre Joaillier is my favorite, next to Master Ceramics, fragrance in the Extrait d'Atelier portfolio. I really like its clarity and uncompromising attitude. If you are on the way with fragrances such as Santal 33 Le Labo, Tiveden ZARA or Papyrus Moleculaire Maison Crivelli, there is a chance that you will like it as well. Finally, I would like to add that during a pleasant meeting at this year's Esxence in Milan, the owner of Extrait d'Atelier revealed to me her idea for her next fragrant studio. I even smelt its prototype. I keep my fingers crossed for this project to materialize as soon as possible, because it is, as usual, a very genre and original approach to the subject. I can't say more ...
Photo Credits:CharlieNose
CHECK OUT HERE the original review in Polish