Soivohle Oudh Lacquer

12/02/09 09:38:37

By: Mark Behnke

For too many years natural perfumery languished in the backwater eddies known as aromatherapy. These compositions were wan, uninspiring and often single-note monstrosities when viewed from a fragrance lover’s aspect. They were more prized for their medicinal aspects than their artistic merit.

Over the past ten years there has been a renaissance in natural perfumery, with many real artists choosing to work with all-natural ingredients. This community has created fragrances as different from those early aromatherapy blends as a “paint-by-numbers” is from a Matisse.

One of the leading lights among the many talented natural perfumers is Liz Zorn and her fragrance House, Soivohle (pronounced see-vo). According to the Soivohle website Ms. Zorn came to perfumery in 2003 after a successful career as a painter. Since 2003 Ms. Zorn has been making some wonderful fragrances many of which I am very fond of. Underworld and its mix of vetiver, balsam wood and leather is one of her best creations.

I found Vanillaville’s mix of tobacco and vanilla to be better than the similarly themed Tom Ford Private Blend Tobacco Vanille. My favorite of her creations, until now, has been Blood Orange & Vetiver; the rich mix of citrus with the sharpness of vetiver over a vanilla base is exquisite on my skin. Because of these previous successes I look forward to every new release from Soivohle and I was particularly looking forward to the Fall 2009 release Oudh Lacquer.

2009 has been a year of one spectacular oudh based release after another and all of them have been markedly different from each other. Oudh Lacquer is no different in that regard as once again a talented perfumer has taken oudh and imprinted their own sensibility on it and somehow made it their own.

Ms. Zorn describes Oudh Lacquer on her website as: “…..an experiment in indulgence, beginning to end. From the rare and costly sink woods used to create the carrier tincture (a year in the making) to the choice of materials for the composition. It was the perfumers intent to gild the lily, dip it in chocolate, and then dip it again.”

The description of the making of that sink wood tincture was described over the last year in Ms. Zorn’s blog and it is this level of dedication that really allows artisanal perfumers, like Ms. Zorn, the opportunity to make soaring creations with the most time-consuming of ingredients. I can’t imagine any of the big boys waiting a year to make a critical component of any of their fragrances.

Ms. Zorn aptly describes Oudh Lacquer as a fragrant indulgence and this is as rich and complex a perfume as I have come across, recently. It is full of rich gourmand notes over the oudh along with surprising moments of floral beauty thrown in.

The top of Oudh Lacquer seems to ooze out of the bottle in a sinuous cloud of deep dark chocolate paired with orange and a delicate linden note which adds a floral counterpoint that give the opening phases of Oudh Lacquer just a hint of what is to come. Very slowly over thirty minutes or so the oudh begins to make itself known as the medicinal qualities of oudh begin to rise through the chocolate. As the oudh rises it brings with it a couple of spicy companions in clove and cinnamon.

About an hour into wearing Oudh Lacquer the mix of chocolate, oudh, clove and cinnamon is balanced like a fine holiday tableau on the olfactory palate. This is the phase of development that Oudh Lacquer lingers in for a very long time on my skin. During this phase floral notes of rose and orris seem to glide in and out adding the same kind of contrast that the linden did in the top. Very gradually more lightly sweeter notes take over from the chocolate as a delicate honey accord along with a light vanilla add a more traditional sweet component, as the chocolate recedes.

Oudh Lacquer has incredible longevity on me but it is a very close wearing fragrance. For all of the subtle beauty on display you will have to invite someone to get close to share that beauty with them. As I said above I have found many of Ms. Zorn’s creations to be outstanding fragrances but, I believe, in Oudh Lacquer she has created a Matisse in fragrant form.

Full Disclosure: This review is based on a sample purchased from Soivohle for the purposes of this review.

Images: Soivohle, wikipedia,

Author: Mark Behnke (Somervill Metro Man)
Fragrantica Writer

Mark Behnke is based in Somerville, MA, a suburb of Boston, and is the writer for Fragrantica. By day, he works as a research chemist in a pharmaceutical company. By night, he has been a consistent poster on the forums at Basenotes.net under his nom de blog, Somerville Metro Man. You can also follow Mark on Twitter @SomMetroMan if you're curious to find out what he wears on a day-to-day basis.

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