Histoires de Parfum Ambre 114 Eau de Parfum

Monday, August 21, 2017

Good morning! My favorite thing about weekends is waking up early, extra early. I'm usually up before dawn, I find it super relaxing to make myself a mug of lemon tea, read and blog while the rest of the west coast snoozes. This quiet period is to fragrances what I think the golden hour is to photography - there's something to be said about enjoying a scent to yourself in the early hours. The weekend before last I rewore Histoires de Ambre 114 Eau de Parfum and hashed out some of my thoughts before hitting up the farmer's market.

This opens with a respectable blast of patchouli, cheered on by sandalwood. This reminds me for the briefest moment of Liushen Florida Water and humid summers before I shake it off the memory and put my head back in the moment. This is not a story about patchouli anyhow, it is a song about amber. Or maybe more about vanilla.

The woods in this fragrance are more prominent at the opening, but offset the sweet vanilla throughout the scent. I know I heavily favor woody notes, I do wish they came into play more. The benzoin-vanilla-tonka bean is a powerful base, tinged around the edges with cedar, the very faintest bit of some fresh herb, and a dab of rose.

Ambre 114 supposedly has 114 ingredients centered around amber, but many are very minor supporting roles that are not noticeable in the face of so much vanilla. During the dry down, there's a bit more musky, incensey feel that nudges this perfume back into amber territory but I wish it was a little more aggressive. With this scent, I get the idea of amber but not the essence, I think a little bit of powderiness takes away from the warmth.

It's safe, as in I think most people who are looking for an amber type scent would find this agreeable. This scent is an occasional wear, maybe once every six weeks, I anticipate more in cooler fall weather. I'm not reviewing my decants from Scentbird in any particular order, but this was from my very first month's subscription and I was pretty pleased.

Sillage: This scent projects pleasantly, not too loudly, trails off just the right amount around me
Longevity: a good 8 hours

Price: $35 for a .5 oz (15ml) travel sized spray from Sephora
$105 for 2 oz bottle or $185 for 4 oz at Sephora
$14.95 for 8ml spray bottle from Scentbird (referral link, you get a free month and so do I)

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