Timbuktu (2004)
by L'Artisan Parfumeur

Genre: Leather

What do you do when you detest one of the most revered and critically acclaimed fragrances in recent memory? If you’re me, you keep trying it, in the hope of someday figuring out what all the love is about. In this spirit I’ve once again sampled Timbuktu, a scent where I’ve conspicuously parted company with most who write about fragrance. The result? I still dislike it vehemently, but I’ve at least come to understand more fully why.

Original review:
I’ve been trying Timbuktu on and off for years, and while I’ve come to understand what Bertrand Duchaufour is trying to get at here, I still don’t like it. There’s a piercing note at Timbuktu’s center that drills its way in right between my eyes and rasps away at my sinuses. For a variation on this theme that’s not merely pain-free, but outright pleasant, I’ll take Duchaufour’s later Dzongkha.

05 July, 2014

I honestly thought I had reviewed Timbuktu years ago - this is just one of the many reasons I revisit all of my samples.

Timbuktu is a beautifully airy and incredibly dry fragrance that leaves not so much sillage but a brief olfactory afterimage of the moving wearer. It is bone-dry, among the most arid scents I've sampled, but the composition leaves a good deal of space, allowing the different facets more room to move about. As for the smell itself, it is the ghost of fruit haunting scorched sand and wood, as though mango fruit juice had been left to dry out for days in the sun after seeping into a length of some charred wood like a cross between red cedar and guaiac. It is the scent equivalent of blending postcards of a Hawaiian beach, an Arizonan desert, and a Nepalese temple: a sort of tropical Gucci Pour Homme. A pleasure to wear.

28 May, 2014

Just like Diptyque Oyedo and Guerlain PH Boisee, I just don't like that gloomy mood it sets me on. A sad fragrance for a funeral or sad reminiscence of the past times gladly remembered, but long lost. Timbuktu is a refined fragrance and does have it's merits, I'll grant it that much of credit. In first instance I thought I might actually like it, but as dry-down came it just went downhills for me. Not because it smells bad but because it influences me negatively in emotional way. Although I find it conceptually intriguing, something like entering an old attic, drenched by the sun and cooled by cold nights, my mindset doesn't allow me to actually like and enjoy this type of fragrance.

12 May, 2014

A really solid vetiver based fragrance that isn't something new or very different at all, but it's a good one.
The opening is a little alchoholic! it's because of using a boozy note or just because of bad quality .... I don't know!!!
I can smell a dirty/earthy vetiver note mixed with some incense that give the scent a little smoky aroma and just a hint of sweetness and fruity notes in the background.
The whole idea of the scent remind me of "Terre D'Hermes" but something is crystal clear here. this one released two years earlier so this is the father!
As time goes by I can smell a little more sweetness and more fruity note beside that earthy vetiver and incense combo.
The scent is not that strong and potent. this can be someones signature scent and he can use it all year round. I said he because it's more masculine than feminine!
Projection isn't that great. mostly close to the skin and longevity is around 6-8 hours on my skin.
As I said a solid and classic vetiver based fragrance that personally I prefer "Terre D'Hermes EDT version" over this.

01st February, 2014

A Very Nice Bright Soft Spicy Fragrance

On the opening I get a bright uplifting incense note mixed in with a soft spicy pink pepper. Within this mix is a very subtle vetiver note just underpinning the soft almost cream like spice. This scent is complex in a very subtle and intricate way. The notes are weaved together so tightly that you only notice them when you go looking for them.

To sum up a very nice bright soft spicy fragrance that offers more than whats on the surface.

26 October, 2013

Fascinating, different, but just not great for me

This is extremely unique, as others have said. It starts off with a blast of Frankincense and not a great deal of anything else. Quickly, pepper and almost a curry like aroma come into the picture, which moves it quickly from very nice to this is interesting, but. At about the half hour point floral and an earthy vetiver become more pronounced. After a while, it becomes more balanced and the elements shift back and forth. It is really an interesting fragrance, and I would put it in the like don't love category, as there are moments that I just don't enjoy it, but others that I do.

_____

A few hours into this, I get nothing but vetiver. If you want a rollercoster ending in a soapy, yet slightly vegital vetiver, this one is for you.

29 September, 2013