Aedes de Venustas (new) (2012)
by Aedes de Venustas

Boating on the River Epte by Claude Monet 1890

Light, green, and fruity, but a delicate, watery fruit (starfruit?). A high, tart, almost pine-y smell in the background of opening. A touch of ginger in there somewhere. A hint of very light musk underneath (vetiver?). Vetiver comes more to the front during drydown - very green, garden-y smell (tomato leaves?) A nice summer fragrance.

It's very hard for me to fully disconnect this perfume from others, so I'm not sure I can be 100% impartial. First off, the original Aedes perfume, the one by L'Artisan, is one of my favorite scents of all time, an almost impossibly complex but constantly wearable mix of smoky incense and gourmand elements. Next to that, the new Aedes is just simple. The rhubarb note is fantastic, but it just sort of sits on some vaguely perfumey soap with a hint of wood underneath.

I also can't help but compare this to CDG's Rhubarb, which was also made by Duchoufour. The CDG is a more insistent fruit note surrounded by rice milk and office smells that I find almost impossibly compelling but that seems quite widely disliked for its weirdness. Well, I suppose the point could be made that the new Aedes is a rhubarb for everyone who hated the CDG for being so weird and compelling, because this Aedes is neither of those, instead content to be fruity soap, albeit very well done fruit and soap.

With all that said, I'm still going to give it a thumbs up, because it really does smell good and only truly pales in comparison to scents I like better. And it's still miles ahead of your average fruity perfume...

Sweet, soapy...smoky(?) Complex but not in a pleasant way. Makes me sneeze.

Ahhhh, fantasy hedgerow where the leaves and twigs smell just right (no nasty bitters or bugs), floating on a cloud of typical discretely sweet, discretely light Duchaufour lactones. Gently, the fruity notes emerge, crisp rather than candied, enfolded in tomato leaf and the angel breath of honeysuckle. This is perfume that is aiming for the quality of light on a lovely spring day or the breeze across a meadow – everything feels unforced and in harmony. It’s no wonder there was a lemming-like rush to claim it, when it was released.
However, there are two structural flaws. One, that a liberal application is needed to get a decent reading on the olfactometer – this should not be the case for an eau de parfum. Two, that the later stages, though cute and cuddly, revert to little more than the lactonic kisses Duchaufour is fond of bestowing – a habit that is turning into a bit of a rut. But the ultimate let down (especially at this price point) has to be the short lifespan of a few hours.