THE ROMAN FRANKINCENSE : : PURITAS by ELECTIMUSS (2020)

Good frankincense perfumes are not easy to come by. They are often overly contaminated with wood synthetics – even bona fide classics such as Comme Des Garcons Avignon eventually go down this mundane route – agar’d up to the max with abrasive so called ouds (almost every incense perfume you now come across); silk-roaded to the stars with roses and spices and everything in the sun until you lose the incense, or overly sweet : much as I enjoy Matiere Premiere’s Encens Suave, with its fine Somalian olibanum resin, you have to be in the mood for the coffee and vanilla – that is much more of a nuzzle up in winter kind of smell.

Sometimes you don’t necessarily feel like the full ethereal aldehyde pope, either: legendary sepulchral frankincenses such as LAVS by Unum, Relique D’Amour by Oriza L. Legrand and the like can feel like Catholic cosplay, as though you were semi-mummified replete with the odour of sanctity in a marble tomb. There is severity, and then there is creepy.

I have always preferred frankincense perfumes with an ambery touch. La Liturgie Des Heures by Jovoy is good in this regard as it tempers some of the religious mysticism with wearability. There are solemn moments during this ritual, but you can relax a little in the pew.

Puritas, a frankincense amber by London-based Electimuss – a house of thunderous perfumes of great intensity inspired by classical Rome – was a scent I discovered while back in England and I took to it immediately. As in : immediately, when you know straight away and you have no doubt. With a little freshness up top in the form of green elemi resin, pink pepper and saffron, and a hidden floral heart of undetectable tuberose, Indian jasmine, rose, and ylang ylang which probably just add to the lovely lightness and happiness at the heart of the scent, the main players in this perfume, inspired by the Roman goddess Vesta (she of the Vestal Virgins, among white columned ruins I used to sit and read books in the Foro Romano when I lived there as a university student), are most definitely a very vivid and high quality frankincense resin and a soft, delicately nuanced, almost Guerlain level amber accord of labdanum, patchouli and tonka been; subtly vanillic, but never cloying.

What I really enjoyed about this sample, which went in next to no time – we both wore it, and I loved how the scent lingered in the air about D (it is an extrait de parfum, and a full bottle doesn’t come cheap), is that the perfumer, Christian Provenzano, manages to keep the frankincense vivid throughout most of the duration of the perfume’s skin life – not an easy feat, as the ghostly volatility of this essence is always preternaturally aiming to go skywards; the soft amber in the base grounds the frankincense, less a scent of purity than its name might suggest, with its shadows of sensuality.