How a wild rose will soon entangle your summer nights
After the highly acclaimed launch of Sleep No More in 2024, perfumer Alexandre Makhloufi, founder of Sacré Français, reinvents the night, this time with a rose as dark as the cocoa in his first opus. From the alternative play that inspired Sleep No More to a story for adults, Alexandre, one of the most promising perfumers of the year, dares to venture into a territory that has yet to be explored by traditional perfumers.
Dark romance.
While traditional fantasy is one of the literatures that has long inspired Alexandre’s imagination, with a Master’s degree in women’s fantasy and Tolkien as his first literary slap in the face, it’s in darker creations that he reveals his olfactory side.
In Coeur Fauve, a rose emerges straight out of a dark fairy tale in which kids tremble and grown-ups stumble. Never a rose in perfumery had been so wild, so dark without losing her identity. Those who have been acquainted to Rose Barbare from Guerlain would not be able to compare. Rose Barbare is a lady playing with her charms. Coeur Fauve is neither male nor female. It is a vegetal animal without gender, a flower that smells the danger. Be careful. She is a beast. But she fears too. Still, she is defiance stitched into well woven notes of Cypriol, Cedar, Gaiac Wood, Labdanum Absolute, Frankincense, Benzoin Absolute and Oak Moss Absolute.
It has been said that every single wound has a story to tell. This rose is certainly wounded and we dive deep with her in the darkness surrounding her. A leather oud accord creates a beasty night around. Meanwhile, she remains wild and untamed even in fear. Still, she is not a savage to you. Soon, she stops running to rest on velvety notes on the edge of your wrist. Untamed but peaceful.
Dark romance or BDSM Rose?
“I have a lot of problems with roses, » explains Alexandre. With all roses, in fact, so the idea for this fragrance was to work on a very woody rose that would still be very unisex, even a little leathery. I wanted to make a rose that was a little dirty.”
The animal under the petals?
‘The material does smell a bit like a pet shop. It’s a bit like being in a zoo,’ explains Alexandre. The animality comes from a leather accord with slightly wavy accents, but I wanted to avoid any impression of a flashy oriental.’ The result is a beautiful effect of ‘dirty’ notes such as cumin and saffron. These notes are not used as such, but these dirty/animal/resolic facets, even a little salty, are induced by the oud leather accord.
Like Sleep No More, Cœur Fauve is a very nocturnal fragrance.
‘I’ve reworked it, trying to inject a little more light and go a little slower on the animalic leathery side.
As rose isn’t a note I particularly like when it’s treated too frontally, I let myself be tempted by the exercise of enveloping it in dark woods and more herbaceous, luminous notes, to give it a more suave, unexpected trail.
I also worked on a root facet on the dry down, which I particularly like, to give the whole a more organic feel. Notes of cistus and chamomile, to give the rose a little facet, but without making it too pink either. For me, it’s a bit like a rose from a fairytale, a rose surrounded by brambles in the moonlight’.
