2 reviews for Charcoal Perfumer H

1. 

   qptsizpasj – 2022-06-12:

   4 out of 5

   You never get anything obnoxious or blaringly synthetic from a Perfumer H creation. It’s always soft and sort of quiet like when you catch a whiff of jasmine blowing in the breeze. Charcoal is PH’s entry in the popular category of niche smokey and while it smells like the flannel shirt you wore to last night’s bonfire, it’s also light and sheer, wet not dry, like an autumn drizzle and wet oak leaves on the ground. It’s not my favorite of this sort of fragrance but it is, like everything I’ve tried from the brand, highly wearable and easy.
2. 

   Anticit – 2022-06-12:

   5 out of 5

   Everything that is woody – sap, resin, green leaves, bark, needles, roots, sawdust, smoke and charcoal, taken to the Nth degree – a just extraordinary evocation of campfires and bonfires and damp autumn walks through forest. Deep and dark and wondrous. It is utterly natural – in some ways it’s reminiscent of Imaginary Authors’ A City on Fire, but made of entirely organic smells rather than being livened up with tangs of burning rubber, plastic, etc.
   Charcoal is arguably more the smell of a place than a perfume, but it’s so viscerally intense and beautiful it made me burst into tears in a public place – the “Perfume” exhibition in Somerset House, London, where it’s one of 10 featured smells. Apparently Lyn Harris based it on her beloved granddad’s garden fires, which makes sense, for its emotional heft as well as its strength. I hung on to the beanbag in the exhibition like a greedy maniac, huffing away at it hungrily while wiping away the tears. It just does something to me.
   And it has ended my quest for the perfect woodsmoke perfume – the many, many other things I’ve tried – while literally asking sales assistants: “have you got anything which will make me smell like a bonfire?” – sometimes get close, but nearly always lose their nerve and sneak in extraneous notes of vanilla or fruit or incense or ‘urban’ smells. This doesn’t do that: it is about SMOKE, real wood smoke, not incense. (I believe it has a good whack of cade, though, so beware if that’s a no-no for you.) But that is why I love Charcoal – it’s uncompromising and honest and – just in my view of course – it is beyond perfection. Whenever or wherever I sniff it, I’m instantly outside, listening to the crackle of burning stuff.
   It’s not aiming to please – I think many people will find it too austere, maybe too rough – but for me it is a genuine revelation of what scent can do. (I don’t burst into tears after smelling things very often… and I can only apologise if this review seems pretentious – but this one gets me right in the feelings. )
   ETA: a respected friend tells me it “smells of kippers”. Which is an impression I can understand … in some ways it really does (the smokiness at least – there’s no fishiness!). I still maintain this is a total masterpiece and close to a scent miracle, for me.