Fougère Obscure
Lavender, hay, coumarin
- Composed by
- Théo Vasseur
- Family
- Fougère
- Formula written
- 2016
- From
- €195.00
Fougère Obscure
Lavender, hay, coumarin
How it was built
The fougère is the oldest continuously used structure in modern perfumery: lavender over coumarin over oakmoss, first written down in 1882 and repeated ever since, mostly badly.
Fougère Obscure keeps the three pillars and darkens all of them. The lavender is an absolute rather than an oil, so it carries the herbal, slightly medicinal weight of the whole plant. The coumarin comes from tonka rather than a bottle. Wormwood at the top adds the bitterness the form usually loses.
Hay absolute in the heart is the departure: it takes the fern accord out of the barbershop and puts it in a field in August.
How it wears
Four properties, read on skin over a full day rather than on a blotter. They describe behaviour, not preference.
Sillage
An arm's length
Longevity
Into the next day
Temperature
Neither
Density
Fully stacked
These are the atelier’s own readings, taken on skin rather than on a blotter, and they describe how the fragrance behaves rather than how much anyone liked it.
Head, heart and base
The materials that determine each stage, in the order they own it. The bars are compositional weight within a tier, not a percentage of the formula; the formula itself is not published.
Head
The most volatile materials. They are what you smell as the alcohol flashes off, and they are gone inside twenty minutes.
Lavender absoluteLavandula angustifolia
WormwoodArtemisia absinthium
BergamotCitrus bergamia
Heart
The body of the composition. It emerges as the head clears and holds for two to four hours; this is the fragrance as it is meant to be recognised.
Geranium bourbonPelargonium graveolens
Coumarin, ex tonkaDipteryx odorata
Hay absolute
Base
The least volatile materials, and the ones that fix the rest in place. What is left on skin at the end of the day, and on cloth for days after.
Oakmoss absoluteEvernia prunastri
Vetiver, JavaChrysopogon zizanioides
Tonka beanDipteryx odorata
Materials and provenance
Where the principal materials come from and how they are won from the plant. Every lot behind a given bottle is recorded against its flacon code.
Lavender absoluteLavandula angustifolia
Plateau de Valensole, Provence
Solvent extraction of freshly cut flowering tops
True lavender rather than lavandin. It yields far less oil per hectare, and it is the only one of the two that smells of the plant instead of the field.
Tonka beanDipteryx odorata
Orinoco basin, Venezuela
Beans cured in alcohol, then absolute
The bean is soaked until the coumarin crystallises on the outside as a white bloom. Wild-harvested from standing forest; the tree is not planted commercially at any scale.
Size and price
Each size is filled from the same batch. The ten millilitre format is not a sample; it is the same juice in a smaller flacon.
€195.00
50 ml eau de parfum · reference NOC-FGO-050
Bottles are filled to order from the current batch and dispatched within five working days. Fragrance cannot be returned once the seal is broken; an unopened flacon may be returned within fourteen days.