Description
The master perfumer Bertrand Duchaufour, inspired by his travel to this old African city and the ancestral magical fragrance ritual ‘Wusulan’, has created the second fragrance of the L’Artisan Parfumeur travel collection –Timbuktu. The power of Wusulan lies in the innate art of Mali women in perfume creation, traditionally passed on from mother to daughter, as a magical fragrant spell for seduction and securing the true love.
This perfume has captured the African temperament and that it presents a new fragrant experience. The green sharpness of rape mango and spicy warmth of pink pepper make an impressive prelude to the mysterious heart of aromatic frankincense and papyrus smoke. The pure and light smoke wraps the exotic African flower Karo Karounde and mixes with the earthy and green vetiver. The base is composed of balsam, spices, patchouli, myrrh, and vetiver.
This wild, magical and mysterious African fragrance with woodsy notes, thick resins and spices, lasts on skin for a long time. It is created to awake memories and desire for long-distance travels, as well as to remind of the beauty and miracle of life as seen by the eyes of Timbuktu women.
The article on Timbuktu fragrance at Fragrantica Timbuktu was launched in 2004.
33211 – :
Timbuktu is a masterpiece. I get earthy green vibes with a beautiful delicate, sweet incense floating above. Surprising long lasting for a EDT. I feel calm when I’m wearing this gorgeous perfume. I love everything about it.
Selvradig – :
This fragrance is divine journey, spiritual feeling and self – en closed to world. I’m suprised when I read the comments about it, because It smells vetiver, cypriol, incense and citruses in a very good balance. Love it!
boris12rvs – :
It reminds me of the medicinal, patchouli sorta smell you get from Zino. I love it when my wife wears it and I like it too. I cannot say that I get the smoke, mango notes people mention and I don’t know what papyrus would smell like. I certainly don’t think this is an oakmoss scent like so many have voted.
All I can say is that it does smell a bit dated but that doesn’t bother me. Has an older woman’s perfume sorta vibe but that is ok with me.
STaidaTub – :
Evergreen/incense/mango goodness. It is much more than the above though. I wrote that just to give a short impression of how it smells to me.
The mango-sweetened incense comes out strong on first application, but after about 2-3 hours the incense mellows, and there is an interesting sweet resiny smell. That smell stays around for another 2 hours.
I’ll have to compare this with Jardin sur le Nil to see how the papyrus and mango notes they have in common compare to each other.
I think this fragrance will be loved by fragrance lovers as it is a quality fragrance and is different than others. But I don’t think newbs will appreciate it. It’s just different enough for the masses to get nervous.
Try before you buy…a decant or sample should be enough. Just stay with it for more than 10 minutes. You’ll be rewarded.
kondrat – :
I wore this off a test decant and it isn’t at all on my skin what I was hoping for it to be. Very soapy and eerily reminiscent of what some urinal cakes/stones smell like in really nice hotels. It isn’t a bad fragrance per se, but it is neither particularly masculine nor does it scream as a fragrance to wear in a suit. Probably best suited for women or anyone in the middle/prime of their life in less formal circumstances.
taungutle – :
You must have a fake, Timbuktu is nothing like you describe, main notes are Vetiver and Cypriol, fresh with an incense twist.
nikolas57 – :
Update: The weather is now much colder where I live and this fragrance is after coming to life, all the nuances have made themselves known; the mango, incense and papyrus. I now feel this has aligned itself with all the adoration it has been receiving! (altho I wish it was bit stronger). It just didn’t work on me in the warm weather. Thank you autumn/winter for what u do to my fragrances, thank you to my fragrances for giving me something to look forward to in winter.
Blind bought this one based on the reviews, am spraying it all evening looking for what i thought was going to be a mash-up between Avignon, Serge Lutens and Andy Tauer.
The initial blast is interesting, I get boozy patchouli, vetiver and tobacco. The dry down, which happens quickly, turns into something very sweet and powdery on my skin, almost like those old fashioned powdered Turkish delight cubed sweets, or as a previous review said talcum powder.
It is not unpleasant just nothing like what i was expecting, I thought it was going to be dry, smokey, exotic, spicy and challenging instead I smell like an old lady.
Is anyone else getting this? Is this because it’s a reformulation or is it just how it smells on my skin?
It also reminds me a tiny bit of the dry down of the original Givenchy Gentleman, retro vibes.
enerbDwedep – :
Timbuktu truly is an experience. How can something so dry, resinous, smoky and balsamic manage to invoke such a clean and fresh feel? Very ceremonial, cleansing and invigorating.
Beautiful for all seasons,climates and settings, I just love this authentic creation for its versatility.
Santucio – :
I kept thinking ‘Where have I smelled this before?’ and then realised it was POAL, minus the rose. The dry down … very similar.
muRdoc – :
This is an art work from Bertrand Duchaufour! I rememeber that when I try this first time, I was totally captivated with its aura. It is unique, unusual and it doesn’t like anything. Timbuktu is a unmatched experience…
Popkha – :
A mix of Encre Noire with Terre d’hermes
alexssshhh – :
A fantastic african fragrance with hot sand, burnt leaves,native spices,valuable resins and something mystical.
I find it last 4 to 8 hours, is affected by heat and really lingers on clothes.
overall, I love this smell and wear it on holidays, art events or summer nights.
This is unisex, but perhaps slightly masculine.
A masterpiece
Oblighblotham – :
Okay, I guess it’s vetiver because I get the same impression with Chanel Sycamore, but surely I’m not the only one who smells weed in this. Really, to me this is straight up college dorm room complete with the sad attempt at masking the musty pong with air freshener. This smells like that kid who thought they were so clever when the exhaled through the dryer sheet over cardboard toilet paper rolls, but really they just smelled like weed and fabric softener. Not a safe blind buy unless you want to relive your college days. No judgements! ;D
zanuda – :
Lovely scent. Green earthy and complex fragrance. Really reminds me of Jubilation XXV for Men.
owenwrelo – :
@smellme11 – are you sure that’s not Bois Farine? Because the last thing I would think when smelling this one is baby/talcum powder. If you got a sample perhaps the samples got mixed up…
lilinuga – :
I can’t for the life of me explain why I get an overwhelming powder blast from this stuff, but that is what is happening. Perhaps it is the variety of patchouli, or the so-called “incense” note, or the Karo-Karounde (whatever that smells like?), but I am going to have to give this bottle away. I was expecting more of a L’aire de Desert Marocain or Amouage Interlude type of similarity, but this isn’t deep like those perfumes at all….this is seriously powdery to me, and suffocating, like inhaling talc.
Irinka – :
An amazing “watercolor” perfume. Almost smells like nothing at all — and certainly nothing you can easily identify — it just smells good. A riskless purchase for most women, and many men will enjoy it as well.
Deservedly popular.
reendg1974 – :
Smells fresh in a natural rather than synthetic way.
Reminds me a little of Coriandre, with a pinch of Casbah’s herbs thrown in.
Not sweet and all the more enjoyable for that.
egor_nsg – :
Spring has sprung here in Baltimore, the first 80′ day.
Enjoying Timbuktu so much, it’s a L’Artisan and Duchaufour classic.
It’s a soft incense that’s best in warm weather, very unique. Because it’s an African incense where it’s allways hot, and this is what they enjoy in West Africa.
When a West African nurse came to our home to treat my mother, I was wearing Timbuktu. She said she immediately recognized the swell, that it’s just like the potpourri and incense they use. So it is very authentic and exotic.
The mango and floral note, blend beautifully with the resins, to produce a soft fruity incense that is gender neutral.
вовак – :
I’m so far behind with my reviews that I don’t remember how I acquired my little decant of Timbuktu, but looking at the list of notes I feel sure I didn’t pick it out for myself, unless it was to try and broaden my horizons. I don’t dislike notes like vetiver, incense, woods and resins, but I usually appreciate them most in combination with softer, sweeter and/or fresher notes to provide some contrast. In Timbuktu there’s none of that, and the result is that it’s a pretty hard, dry, severe, almost pungent kind of scent.
I can understand why people like it if they’re into this kind of thing, because I’m sure it’s well-made and it’s definitely unique, and maybe it does call to mind that particular part of Africa – who knows, I’ve never been there, but the notes are certainly natural enough to make it possible. But to make it enjoyable to my own taste, it would need something else, some hint of relief among all those harsh dry elements. If only I could smell the mango that’s supposed to be in there, it could have provided that balance and made it more unisex as well, but unfortunately I can’t detect it at all.
So Timbuktu is a definite “no” for me personally, but I don’t dislike it – in fact, I’d say it’s just as definite a must-try for those looking for an uncompromising woody, smoky kind of fragrance, especially if their taste leans more masculine than feminine.
1974 – :
Another masterpiece by Bertrand Duchaufour himself, quality blend and complex aroma, solid longevity and okay projection, to me vetiver is the star of the show. Best application would be summer / spring daytime, safe for the office and I get a lot of compliments from Timbuktu, a must try!
Aleks_24 – :
I bought this blind and feel happy about it. Dry and warm, it is ideal during wet boring winter which we have now. Very long lasting, more than 12 hours what is very surprising for EDT. Silage is not strong and quite acceptable for the office, but much stronger in wet air.
kilot.xva – :
Pre-2016 Timbuktu, I *love* you. I blind-bought a bottle in 2015 as a birthday gift to myself. It was an expensive gamble: at the time, I had tried several of L’Artisan’s more feminine perfumes. None of them had been quite right, but I was intrigued. There was something compelling about the way the house approached perfume, even if I hadn’t yet found a L’Artisan that worked for me. I knew I liked woods and orientals best, and despite the polarizing reviews, I paid $100 real American money dollars for a bottle of Timbuktu based on the testimony of anonymous people on the Internet. It was the most expensive perfume I’d ever bought.
I didn’t love it at first. It was *weird*. Like nothing I’d ever sampled. There is something about the deep resiny base that is almost old-fashioned. Though I’d tried quite a few niche perfumes before Timbuktu, I hadn’t smelled anything quite so classic from a niche house. At first, I thought it smelled too mature, and too masculine, yet after a few wears, I could not keep myself away from it.
I’ve had plenty of “signature scents” before, but pre-reformulation Timbuktu is *my* scent. This is not a perfume that I wear. This perfume *is* me. It suits me on girl days and boy days and all the days in-between. It suits me in spring, summer, fall, and winter–and smells different every season. In the spring I smell like a lioness in heat lazing on a warm rock in the savannah. In the summer, I am a priestess wandering through a mythical bazaar, reeking with incense and ancient ritual. In the fall, I smell like the smoke from fire that burns burns at night on a safari, musky with the scent of something savage lurking in dark. In the winter, Timbuktu is festive without smelling Christmas-y; it’s the smell of the incense the shepherds bring the boy king.
The opening is a blast of peppercorn and resins and dry, yellow grass. It’s a little sharp, uncomfortable but not unpleasant. The best way I can describe the feeling is “dramatic tension”. It smells like opening the door to an ancient tomb. You know there is going to be something waiting in the dust and the dark, but you don’t know what.
I can’t pick out the mango or the karo-karounde flowers… they don’t seem to come up on my skin. I’m not sure I would recognize karo-karounde (I don’t think I’ve smelled it elsewhere), but there really is nothing gourmand or floral about Timbuktu to my nose. The frankincense, myrrh, and papyrus smoke are the most prominent notes on my chemistry. For some reason, the peppercorns last a long time for me, 3 hours or so. I can smell the vetiver here, but it’s weird, nothing like the green or earthy-green scent I associate with vetiver. This smells like a field of vetiver that wasn’t harvested before the dry season came. It’s vetiver that has dried out in the desert sun and also the scent of the soil turning to dust beneath it.
For a perfume with so many heavy notes, there is something effervescent in Timbuktu’s nature. That effervescence doesn’t “sparkle” like an aldehyde or “bubble” like champagne. Rather, it flickers like a mirage that never gets closer than the horizon or black wisps of incense smoke fading into an endless blue sky.
This is the most powerful L’Artisan fragrance I’ve experienced. The pre-2016 version lasts 10 hours on my skin, though it does fade quite a bit. In hair and clothing, it will last days. Sillage is pretty big at first blast, but then the fragrance settles. It has about a radius of a couple of feet for the first 4 hours of so, then settles closer to the skin as it dries down. People will *notice* this, but not everyone will like it. Although I met my best perfume buddy when she complimented me on this. I immediately gave her a spritz on the condition that she let me smell her (it was much more ladylike on her skin!), and thus a friendship was born.
She warned me that L’Artisan had changed packaging and reformulated, but her nose is much more refined than mine, so I didn’t worry too much about it at the time. Still, when my 2015 bottle began running low, I got a decant of the new bottle just to be safe. In one spray, my heart was broken–this was not Timbuktu.
Post 2016-Timbuktu smells similar to the real thing, close enough that it gives me Pod Person syndrome: this calls itself Timbuktu, and it kind of resembles Timbuktu, but it doesn’t have the same walk or the same inflection in its voice. It’s an imposter. This Timbuktu is but a ghost of itself. It’s a skeleton wrapped in an ancient, tattered cloak, wandering the desert in search of its lost soul.
L’Artisan Parfumeur, you murdered a masterpiece. I now know what it is like to lose a beloved fragrance to a bad reformulation: it’s like mourning. I look at my bottle slowly getting lower and I know that there exists only a finite amount of the true Timbuktu left in the world. That makes this juice all the more precious, and I am putting off buying bike parts for six months to invest in a few bottles of the real thing, bottles that I will make last as long as I can. Even then, when it’s all gone and there is no more, Timbuktu will haunt my nostrils until the day I die.
Damn, I am glad that I purchased a few L’Artisan scents before the mass reformulation. This reformulation is so bad that I’m not only in mourning for Timbuktu, but also for the L’Artisan fragrances I did not get to experience beforehand: Mechant Loup, Patchouli Patch, Dzing!, Dzongkha, etc. Part of me really wants to try the old formula of those too, but I’m afraid I’ll get hooked on yet another dead fragrance and then have to write another 1000 word obituary for a *smell*….
Mewdj519Unlogrere – :
In Southern California we have hot, dry Fall’s/Autumns. The hills have dry grass that is a spark away from going up in flames. That’s what I get from Timbuktu.
I used to find this so challenging, but now I don’t know what I was thinking. I’m wearing it today on a warm Fall day and it’s great. A fruity, spicy, vetiver that wears really well.
The fruit jumps off my skin in the opening and it keeps up a good while into the dry down, but eventually it gives way to becomes more about the spice and vetiver. That’s where the dry grass feel comes in.
I love it. So glad I gave it a shot today and will wear it a ton more!
bo3-53 – :
Timbuktu, Dzongkha and Dzing! are the great trinity of L’Artisan. There is plenty of excellent fragrances to choose from when it comes to L’Artisan, but these three are the ones to most effortlessly blend the finest aroma with a sense of uniqueness and just the right level of mysticism. Wearing them is spiritual.
They all exist in the same space of creative wonder so it’s no surprising they share similarities. As for Timbuktu it is darker in color than Dzongkha, yet is lighter in feeling, woody, smoky, transparent and perfect. Dzongkha is thicker, spicier and perfect. Dzing! is leathery, funny and perfect.
Ah, how i would love to smell them again for the first time.
*****
perCoemoZonrY – :
The vetiver overwhelms all the other notes, making this lean towards the masculine end of things.The incense is the second strongest note. It is cold and airy, it reminds me of Avignon by CDG. I was intrigued by the mango, it’s barely there, but it provides some sweetness to balance out the other notes. After about an hour the first two notes become weaker, making this scent a bit more gender-balanced. I would recommend this for men who are just getting into perfumes or for the tomboy in your life. It can be worn year-round.
dcn174speagoessenda – :
According to my preferences, I was given a blind choice of 3 fragrances by the Sephora sales woman: Derek Lam’s Blackout, Atelier Cologne’s Oud Saphir and, the winner for me of the three, Timbuktu. It was my first venturing into niche perfumes. Yves Saint Laurent’s M7 is one of my all-time favorites, and I find Timbuktu to be similar in the incense note and the overall structure. It’s a little green, though that lightens and brightens it, making it a great alternative to deodorant. It lasts long on skin and has moderate projection.
icersape62 – :
Chatting to a Fragrantican friend about Timbuktu, she commented that it smells very masculine on her and asked how it was for me; naturally I was compelled to wear it today to answer her properly.
My response is that Timbuktu is more a “smell” than a “perfume”. It is asexual, rather than unisex.
Wearing Timbuktu takes me to an unseasonably hot day in early autumn; the sun has scorched the grass over the course of the summer. I am sitting in the shade of an ancient tree, drinking a gin and tonic, which is sparkling and fizzing and the icecubes clink against the sides of the glass, the noise chiming with the lazy chirp of grasshoppers. An old book is cradled in my hands, its pages yellowed and loosened from the spine due to use and the passage of time. The smell from the tree, the sun-scorched vegetation, the dusty earth, the gin and the book are mingling.
That is Timbuktu to me. And I love it.
Orion Commander – :
Zār : In the cultures of the Horn of Africa and adjacent regions of the Middle East,[1] Zār (Arabic زار , Ethiopic ዛር) is the term for a demon or spirit assumed to possess individuals, mostly women, and to cause discomfort or illness. The so-called zār ritual or zār cult is the practice of exorcising such spirits from the possessed individual.[2]
Zār exorcism has become popular in the contemporary urban culture of Cairo and other major cities of the Islamic world as a form of women-only entertainment. Zār gatherings involve food and musical performances, and they culminate in ecstatic dancing, lasting between three and seven nights.[2] The tanbura, a six-string lyre (6-stringed “bowl-lyre”[3]), is often used in the ritual.[4] Other instruments include the mangour, a leather belt sewn with many goat hooves, and various percussion instruments.[4]…. Wikipedia
kanunon – :
I don’t have this one yet but am quite intrigued by the notes..
However, upon reading the description above.. I’m curious as to what a ‘rape mango’ would smell like..
Hopefully similar to a ripe mango(?)
LOL
ernixxx – :
My taste in perfume is completely polarised – I love clean, soapy, talc scents but also dark woody, incense based fragrances. I’ve found in the past that when I settle on one I start to crave the opposite. Somehow on my skin’s chemistry Timbuktu managers to satisfy both tastes. It opens as mango, pepper, patchouli and then dries down to an earthy soapy gorgeousness. Some reviews are declaring it’s manliness but I think it’s a very mysterious fragrance and totally unisex, depending on the person of course. I’m totally in love. Thank you L’Artisan.
enclave – :
A mixture of baked clay and paper is pretty much all I get from Timbuktu. This baked clay smell reminds me somewhat of Tauer’s brilliant L’Air du Desert Marocain, which itself has a desert sand being baked by the sun vibe.
However, this is where the parallels end. Timbuktu doesn’t have the depth or complexity of the Tauer offering. The long and short of it is, that unfortunately, Timbuktu just isn’t very nice. Last about 4-5hrs, with weak to moderate projection.
HedInheseFers – :
Nothing to compare with the older version. The new one smells saliva on my skin. What a pity… I bought the big bottle. Similar experience with the Voleur des roses. Either they change their formula or they turn easily.
dimka1907 – :
This is a beautiful fragrance but, to be honest, it’s not unisex. It should be proud of its masculinity! The strongest note is vetiver, followed by papyrus and spices. I don’t get any exotic associations – to me, this is simply a gorgeous green woody-spicy scent.
EnzoForza – :
Favorite perfume! With YSL Rive Gauche collection line and Mancera Sand oud. Mancera Cedrat Boisee of course 😀
kotcombat – :
Quite easily the number one fragrance in my collection.
The main things i get are vetiver, incense and that green mango. But for me this is not about the individual notes and how they blend together. There are no real stars of this composition. It is at once clean, bracing, juicy, exotic and a little bit mystical.
Opens like you are walking through 100% humidity in a tropical rain forest and then transforms to an earthy, green grassland with the humidity turning to enchanting smoke.
This is voodoo for the nose.
10/10
ViRuEn – :
This reminds me of Kenzo Jungle PH, but with the dry fiery rawness turned down, and as others have said, more swampy, humid rainforest skank.
Not sure how I feel about this one, it feels a little on the damp and dingey side. When I’m perceiving it as incense and mangos I enjoy it. I could probably only imagine wearing this to a music festival or a gig.
Update: The word which keeps popping into my head is ‘fusty’. It actually reminds me of a specific damp room full of old music books in a charity shop. The dankness is like the inside of a book, the incense smells like confused cloud of ‘all the incenses’ the front of the shop, and the soapiness smells like old man soap. Possibly ‘medimix’, ayurvedic medicated soap.
Luca Turin must have skin that smells of lavender and strawberries to actually benefit from this stuff.
Maratello – :
Timbuktu is another one on Luca Turins 5 Star rated frags and it has been on my wish list for a while. Finally picked it up last month. I am reviewing the current formulation and I dont know what has changed in relation to the original.
I dont really get any of the top notes listed here. What hits me straight away is the smoky incense and a dry, thick, woody note which I am assuming is the papyrus. I have not really smelled it in any other frag to be frank and once it settles into your skin, is quite nice. This Papyrus incense blend sits atop a bed of resinous Myrhh, patchouli and a very dry but strong vetiver. The fragrance is blended quite well so none of the notes stick out as such, they just meld into an impression of dry, resinous incense. Projection is kind of strong in the first hour or so and then it gets down to about 6 inches for most of it’s scent life. Longevity on me is good, 7-8 hours most of the time. This is strictly a cooler weather or air conditioned environment frag.
Now comes the crux.Unlike most of the others On luca Turin’s 5 star rated fragrance list, this is not a safe blind buy. If you like Incense and Oud notes, especially the South asian and middle eastern kind, you’ll probably like this one. ( This is not barnyard skanky or anything like that) I have not been to Morocco but like the name Timbuktu, this does conjure up the vibe of a market or souk in south Asia or the middle east, the smells of spices, sack cloth and cardboard boxes, burning incense, etc. Very exotic smelling. I for one love this but it is definitely a try before you buy fragrance. One of a kind by and large. If you like incense notes and dont mind experimenting a little, do check this one out.
ime922Negeltzex – :
Like so many others this has had to be re-formulated. I got a large bottle sample from Sephora. Couldn’t really smell it, almost had anosmia to it–the entire thing. I thought maybe it was me, the day, the night–whatever, maybe a bad sample. But I got another bottle from STC identical to the one I purchased at Sephora. Same thing.
This has essentially no silage on me. I have to bury my nose to my wrist–and given the early and passionate reviews of Timbuktu, it must have been redone. I do have skin that just eats up perfume; only the richest scents tend to last on me, but this was insane: light and low. The longevity is reasonable but it’s a skin scent, and very faint at that.
What I CAN smell is sexy, amberish-patch with a dirty sweet mango note at top of opening. Drydown–what I can dectect is spicy deliciousness with an animalic facet–very nice. I really wanted to love this–the notes are just my thing, but I after two separate small bottles, I can’t see forking over for a scent that wears like a cologne. STC and Sephora both have actual small original manufacturer bottles–so try before you commit to a bigger jug of juice.
vertual – :
Opening is a very harsh wood to me, I guess the papyrus. Too much damp earth / dirt style scent in the opening for it to be enjoyable for me, but the dry down is ok very vetivery. If you do enjoy the opening, Al-Rehab Dehn al Oud sell 6ml of this stuff for very cheap, I’d say resemblance is 95%. Don’t get many of the other notes upon first try. Will test again and revert.
Kakyshonok – :
The best way I could describe Timbuktu’s opening is: hot glass which is heated by a huge amount of incense (don’t ask me how that would be possible). The drydown is smoked vetiver and patchouli, so it’s a bit nasty which won’t please a lot of people but at the same time it’s fascinating.
It lasts a good 8-10 hours on my skin.
Timbuktu is one of those Niche fragrances that is supposed to be art and it achieves that but it’s wearable which is rarely the case for artistic fragrances.
tur13 – :
Timbuktu is a fragrance of modern conception and almost without evolution.
The opening is slightly fruity and above all spiced, it lasts little since the aromatic green and dry touch of the papyrus is installed, a papyrus that marks the aroma resulting from this fragrance, all this along with a considerable mixture of balms that soften it, They warm and sweeten like myrrh and benzo, next to them is the vetiveril acetate that feels quite integrated but exploiting a woody facet softer and less earthy than the vetiver Bourbon.
Finally and during the drying the incense is united, producing a very smoky soft edge, giving an effect that I compare to the facets of the oak moss, for my taste the best of Timbuktu.
I have found a well-made fragrance, without being excellent, I also find it serious and elegant, but at the same time it maintains a slight rustic and informal touch.
The duration is good but the projection could be improved, the encounter for multistake use.
Rating: 7
(((SHUHER))) – :
Timbuktu rocketed right to my sky-high “love + fav” shelf, and straight to the very modestly equipped “summer stuff” department.
I was not sure when I ordered the sample because I was utterly unable to create any picture of how it smells based on reviews here.
But… Oh!
Opening:
Bam! Bam! Ba-bam! Bitter, strong, herbal, dense… Vavooom!
That’s why I spray it 15 minutes before going out.
Drydown:
The most specifically beautiful combination of bitterish but sweet-like (not sweet) warm herbs and aromatics on woods, but with something fresh-like to lift it up and keep it up.
I don’t sense Timbuktu, or Africa (and how could I?), but I do clearly smell very well known South Mediterranean inlands:
Sun-drenched and dried aromatic bitter/sweet bushes and herbs evaporating above the dry soil into the heat, and some breeze making thick hot air bearable.
Timbuktu brought me this high-noon feeling of the sun right above your head, when you think that you cant’t take it anymore, but, in fact, you know you will, and you do.
Because that’s the peak of the dry hot summer, and when it’s gone, in the middle of winter, when the gray coldness makes you crave for high noon in the peak of the summer, you won’t remember cold drink by the swimming pool, or air conditioned view to the sea – you’ll remember t-h-i-s.
Nothing commonly floral, nothing commonly fruity.
Timbuktu is egzotic, naturalistic, elemental, but also well tempered, very airy and not a bit heavy. It is at the same time very intense, and very light, and there lies the true artistry of this perfume.
For me, Timbuktu turned out to be oddly sensual and highly addictive – someone bellow mentioned “animalic earthiness”, and I think that might be it. Animalic – yes, but “earthy”, not “dirty”.
Absolutely wearable sensous challenge.
On me Timbuktu performs without masculine suggestions, so I guess this is truly adaptable unisex which fits you,or not.
The oppinions in my surroundings are polarisied, but clearly because Timbuktu, being recognizebly different from the mainstream scents, is not a typical crowd pleaser.
I get “interesting” as a comment a lot, but that’s because Timbuktu IS interesting.
So far, the best weardly interesting description I’ve heard is:
“It smells like some African medicine-woman or witch was told to make Aromatics Elixir out of what she gathered around her.”
I can’t argue this one, it seems somehow really appropriate, though the fragrances are not similar.
Of course I do own a big bottle now.
I enjoy Timbuktu so much. It is my match, one hell of the match.
*LOVE
*silage: moderate+ (arms lenght, at least)
*longevity: long lasting (up to 8 hours)
*weather/season/time: Shows it’s best in moderately warm /warm weather, suitable even for hot days (+30 C). Day. Night. Casual to formal.
alex741028 – :
While Timbuktu is nowhere near Egypt, this is definitely giving me ancient Egyptian vibes! The mango, papyrus, and vetiver combine to make something really strange and unique. Very underrepresented in the perfume world too. It has a dry, incense paper smell. The fruit isn’t juicy, it’s pulpy. Like the skin, rind, or part where the stem meets the plant. The rest of the components combine to make a strange background. It definitely smells exotic to me! I haven’t been to Africa, but this is very evocative of how I picture the perfume’s namesake.
Kineiroli – :
See below for my review of the bottle with the wave. Now I have the bottle with the tree and understand what all the fuss is about. This is a wonderful transparent incense scent that reminds me in passing of the original Sables by Goutal, which is similarly hot and dry. On me, the main notes are incense, papyrus and vetiver, plus a bit of a soapy note – I’m not getting any fruity or green notes. It’s delicious – why on earth did they reformulate this?
Bottle with the wave.
Goes from an overbright green and sharp melon note to an overbright rosy floral that smells like a cheap air freshener. In fact, five hours into the drydown I’m thinking of scrubbing it. Oh well, at least I only bought 15ml. I’m guessing this is a reformulation, as there are none of the notes I was expecting, no smoke, no incense etc. It smells like cheap rubbish from the supermarket. What a mess – how could Artisan do this to one of their most-loved fragrances? My bottle has the label with the wave, not the tree, and is in clear glass, not smoked glass.
dobrik7 – :
Right now as it’s drying down it very much reminds me of Le Labo Rose 31, with smoke, incense and some bitter-sweet-dry vetiver. But still, the overall “accord” to me smells like that pleasant musky intense soapy Le Labo accord…
PreorotetaHip – :
This is review of the reformulated fragrance.
The first few minutes of this are difficult to live with if you don’t know what’s coming. It goes on like a very cheap aftershave but dries down into something very beautiful and mysterious. I had a sample of the original and it didn’t have the loud off putting openi