Ann Demeulemeester A Parfum

Read the middle of this and you can see what it is for. The heart is jasmine, May rose, and birch-oiled leather, which is an unusual thing to put together: two of the softest materials in perfumery against one of the hardest. Birch tar is the note that gives leather accords their smoke and their bite, and it is the material that has made leather scents divisive for a century. Setting it directly against jasmine and rose is not a compromise between the two registers. It is both of them at full strength, at the same time, which is exactly the tension the clothing has always worked in.

The opening is bright and then immediately not: Calabrian bergamot and Sicilian lemon for perhaps a minute, and then cinnamon, clove, and cumin arrive underneath and turn the citrus dark. Cumin in particular is a material almost nobody uses now, because it reads as skin rather than as fragrance and it is unsettling in the way skin is. The base is sandalwood, vetiver, patchouli, and rosewood, which is a classical, dry, woody landing and the most conventional part of the composition.

It is a parfum, meaning the highest concentration, so it does not project across a room; it sits on the person and lasts.

Sizing and dimensions

75 ml, 2.5 fl oz.

How it is worn

At the pulse points, sparingly, because a parfum concentration does not need to be applied like an eau de toilette and will be too much if it is. It develops over the first twenty minutes, so judge it on the heart rather than on the opening.

We do not carry much fragrance and we would rather carry one thing that argues than five that flatter. This argues. It is also the rare case of a scent made by a designer rather than licensed to one, which is the difference between an object from a house and a product with a house's name on it.

Ann Demeulemeester founded the label in 1985 and stepped away from designing it in 2013; Stefano Gallici has led the design since 2023. The fragrance is hers. She composed it herself, released it in 2023, and named it for the letter A, which is her initial and the first letter of the alphabet.

Top notes of Calabrian bergamot, Sicilian lemon, Ceylon cinnamon, clove, and cumin. Heart notes of jasmine, May rose, and birch-oiled leather. Base notes of sandalwood, vetiver, patchouli, and rosewood. Genderless.

Fragrance is damaged by light and by heat, in that order. Keep the bottle in its box, away from a window and away from a bathroom, where the temperature swings every time someone showers. Stored properly it will hold for years; stored on a sunny shelf it will turn in one summer.

Scent carried on the body rather than on cloth is the Paulu Perfume Pendant Necklace, which is made to hold it. Everything we currently hold from Ann Demeulemeester is listed together.