AUTUMN EDIT

The six fragrances leaving our Essential Stores more than any other these weeks.

Forget pastry vanilla.

In perfumery, vanilla is a Madagascan orchid worked like a wood: a dark, resinous absolute with shades of leather and smoke. Matière Première pushes it towards powder, D'Orsay doubles it with Balkan tobacco, L'Atelier Parfum wants it black three times over. Gourmand, but grown up.

The note that warms without weighing you down.

A Venezuelan seed and a single molecule to define it, coumarin: cut hay, bitter almond, blond tobacco. It is tonka that gives body to Tonka Hysteria by D'Orsay, to Soleil Tonka by Chambre52, to Blossoms Smoke by Parle Moi de Parfum. Comfort, in the best sense of the word.

Roasted, bitter, full. Like at the bar counter.

Coffee in fragrance is an accord, not an extraction: the roast is rebuilt with pyrazines, cocoa and a thread of rum. Kilian serves it at midnight, Mind Games plays it with tonka bean, Parle Moi de Parfum rests it on woods, Matière Première smokes it with incense. For those who do not fear bitterness.

Leaf, honey, smoke: it smells of long evenings.

Tobacco absolute is sweet before it is dark: honey, dried fruit, a hint of leather. Chambre52 commits it to memory with black cherry and saffron, L'Atelier Parfum rolls it into a volute, Liberty weaves it with tuberose, Roja Parfums entrusts it to ambergris. You need not smoke to wear it.

Resins, labdanum, benzoin: it stays on the skin until evening.

Amber does not exist in nature: it is an accord born at the start of the twentieth century, labdanum, benzoin and vanilla. From there descend Baccarat Rouge 540 and Grand Soir by Maison Francis Kurkdjian, Ganymede Extrait and B683 by Marc-Antoine Barrois, Ambre Latte by Essential Parfums, Gold Immortals by Ex Nihilo, Mortel Noir by Trudon, London Black Edition by Widian. A sillage that asks no permission.