A few weekends ago, we were in New York and happened to visit the Maison Margiela boutique. The customer service was impeccable, and while that didn’t offset the eye-watering nature of the price tags, it did make the experience quite enjoyable, as the staff seem genuinely passionate about the designs and styling of the pieces. On our way out, I noticed the perfumes, and picked one at random to try on a scent strip: Ch. 3 Anguish and Awe. They had the well-known Replica line as well, but I wasn’t familiar with this chaptered one, and later learned that it was launched earlier this year as the Scentsorium.

This is, per the brand, “A collection of 6 fundamental & contrasted human emotions distilled into 6 radical olfactive chapters.” Anguish and Awe was familiarity distilled and sharpened, and I thought I recognized patchouli and incense, only to shrink privately in slight embarrassment later when I looked it up and found that it was a rose-leather, boldly outlined by geranium. How could I not have identified my favorite notes en duo right away?! Yet it haunted me every time I opened my purse for several days afterwards, and even after I discarded the scent strip because it was getting a bit spiky. My pack of tissues was saturated with it. Every time I wiped my mundane nostrils, my mind was sent somewhere aspirational.

So, I purchased a discovery set, and have been exploring the other chapters. The collection seems to maintain a theme of sharp lines, crisp and airy in every genre. Most fall broadly into an amber or woody category.

The sixth, and last, chapter is Fit of Folly by perfumers by Suzy Le Helley and Philippe Paparella-Paris, which, per the brand, is:

the “Grand Final”: the moment you look back and realize that nothing was ever guaranteed. Chapter 6 is about accepting the absurd and embracing your own spark of folly. With that surrender comes a lighter kind of wisdom, like a breath.

The perfume opens sweet, musky, and spicy—this overture is quickly followed by a hint of warm fruit, as though the amber in the base is keen to elbow its way up front and join the bergamot. Said citrus is not the mellow yellow it sometimes appears to be, but rather sharp (a recurring theme) and solar. A rich, creamy sweetness persists, perhaps aided by the sandalwood note. This phase is what my nose perceives as “sexy,” reminiscent of the glorious first hour or so of Ligno by Jeroboam (before it plummets into rankness), where the relative contributions of a certain facet of patchouli and a chorus of deliberately redundant large, macrocyclic musks remain undetermined. Apparently, both are overdosed here for “an ever-lasting trail and in intoxicating presence on skin”.

The brand website describes Fit of Folly as Fougere Musky, while Fragrantica classifies it as Woody. I can see the reasoning of both. The patchouli here is meant to be abstract and mineralic, “[a]mplified by an exclusive ambery wood accord” that is fortunately not a scratchy woody amber. The mystery of its sharp outline may be partially solved by the mention of the perfume containing Taliouine saffron, hidden in the FAQ section rather than highlighted in the notes list. Why it’s not listed is a mystery to me. The star seems to be the patchouli scrubbed clean.

The fragrance appears sharper on fabric than on skin, and while no flowers are discussed, I suspect some florals are lurking anonymously… perhaps gardenia? Or is it an illusion from the saffron?

In any case, my folly is constantly sniffing my arm trying to parse the notes I haven’t been told about.

Have you tried any perfumes from the Maison Margiela Scentsorium collection?