If you wish to start with a pure expression of the vetiver note, Vetiverissimo (FZOTIC) is a great fragrance to start your vetiver journey. Here perfumer Bruno Fazzolari sought to create something grounded yet sparkling, showcasing its clean tessellations of dry, fresh, sweet green, woody, and smoky. It is altogether svelte and subtle. His inspiration? To make the best vetiver! While Fat Electrician (Etat Libre d’Orange) is described as a semi-modern vetiver. In this interpretation, vetiver’s retro-coding is transformed with a brilliant mix of sweet resins, marron glace, creme chantilly, and olive leaf. It approaches the edible just enough, and then pulls back into seriousness. It is surprisingly smoky; earthy but delicious; with a surprisingly metallic undertone that lives up to its name.
If Fat Electrician is semi-modern, then Bois Imperial (Essential Parfums) is full-modern, utilising a range of aroma materials that speaks to current taste profiles. This puts vetiver in an prime position alongside cedar and patchouli materials, creating a wood fragrance that feels to have turned to crystal glass. It is light, radiant, and generous: a snap of spicy sizzling pepper, Thai basil and grapefruit frame the clean woody heart of the fragrance. Tiger (Zoologist) achieves a similar effect, keeping the vetiver note raw and plain-spoken. Its grassy feeling, like the namesake feline prowling in the tall vetiver and papyrus grass, is cut with the citrusy sweetness of kumquat, balanced with its bitter profile. There is darkness all over, firm and grounded with dense ebony wood. An exciting expression of the note.
Amping it up even further, The Black Knight by Francesca Bianchi makes use of vetiver’s earthy-dusty-smoky profile to create a mediaeval image of knights on horseback, barracks, camp fire, and military camps. And the result is brilliant - animal and earth, cordovan leather, tough stemmy herbs, and fiery spices. Don’t be put off by its bold opening - on skin this is a marvel to watch.
Finally, once you’ve graduated through the many facets of the vetiver note, end with Vetiver Bourbon (Parfum d’Empire), an embrace of earthy roots which include not only vetiver, but also orris and angelica. A highly naturalistic vetiver with all of its innate contradictions, it is fresh in a most unusual sense, like a sort of refined and clarified volcanic soil, spiced with clove and drawn out with musky vegetal ambrette. Dignified yet rugged.
