The first perfume to cure me of an acute aversion to violet was surprisingly not Apre L'Ondee (my appreciation for the Guerlain masterpiece came a lot later) and not even Uncle Serge's Bois de Violette. Instead, it was Untitled No. 3 by Sarah Horowitz.
The Untitled Series is a Luckyscent/Scent Bar exclusive- a commissioned limited edition range by several prominent West Coast perfumers. Sarah Horowitz is the creator of Creative Scentualization. I like her work quite a bit, but always found the Creative Scentualization perfumes to be a bit safe or too close to other favorites. But the abstract Untitled No. 3 breaks the mold and feels like a purple and green adventure.
This is a perfume oil, thus the development feels more like a spiral. It goes round and round in several directions but stays close to the core of the yuzu and violet that balance each other perfectly. It's not a citrus scent and not really a floral. The sweet anchor of creamy sandalwood-amber-musk is a beautiful and satisfying backdrop for the violet. One might not expect it from these notes, but Untitled No. 3 is not powdery at all and not overly feminine. Men who don't categorically object to perfume oils and violet notes might find that their skin brings out the darker spicy wood-incense aspect and would enjoy it quite a bit.
The Untitled Series is limited to 125 bottles of each scent. No. 3 by Sarah Horowitz ($65, 8 ml) was released in 2006 and still available from Scent Bar in Los Angeles and their online store Luckyscent. I bought it about three years ago and my bottle is still fresh and full of life.
Image: Violet Flight, fractal art by Vicky Brago-Mitchell
This is one of my favorite perfumes - it's in the top five, and I rarely see anyone write about it, much less know it. I've always had a love/hate relationship with violet, but the combination of violet and amber, with no overly-sweet or powdery notes just does it for me.
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