Created by master perfumer Isabelle Doyen for niche Swiss fragrance house LesNez, l'Antimatiere is about as close as a fragrance can get to the scent of clean human skin without completely fusing itself to the wearer.
Comprised almost entirely of a soft skin-musk that's dialed down just slightly from the average body temp, l'Antimatiere wins a near perfect score in the 'So Subtle I Almost Didn't Notice You Were Wearing Perfume' Olympics.
This doesn't mean that you can't smell it, it just plays by different rules than the more obvious floral/woodsy/fruity juices that trumpet their arrivals and imprison the room's attention thereafter; l'Antimatiere, instead, performs a series of understated scent tricks and olfactory maneuvers that bypass security and sneak in through the back entrance -- the better to trigger the gong of the unconscious, my dear.
There's a clear difference between "Hello" and "It's a pleasure to meet you" -- a verbally minor yet pscyhologically seismic shift in vocabulary from "That's a lovely perfume you're wearing" to "Wow, you smell terrific!", and wearing l'Antimatiere can easily be the cause for both the latter.
LesNez Let Me Play the Lion is more forthright about its intentions than l'Antimatiere. Another one of Isabelle Doyen's creations, Let Me Play the Lion appropriates l'Antimatiere's hushed foundation but introduces an entirely different, and noticeably striking, structural schematic to build on top of it.
Dry and enticingly spicy, mixing dusty layers of cedar and sandalwood with anise and incense smoke, Let Me Play the Lion literally begs you to asses its charms and burst into a resulting applause. If l'Antimatiere is the brilliant behind the scenes speechwriter, then Let Me Play the Lion is the charismatic candidate bathing in the glow of flashbulbs and news camera lights, ostentatiously flirting rather than covertly manipulating.
"Somebody take a poll -- I can feel my numbers rising!"
Both of them are successful on their own terms, yet I would find myself reaching for l'Antimatiere more often than Let Me Play the Lion, mostly because l'Antimatiere is far more subtle and can therefore insinuate itself into a wider variety of situations and circumstances without attracting undo attention. That being said, Let Me Play the Lion has a terrific drydown, all full of warmth and a slight sweetness.
Photo of bottle of l'Antimatiere -- so yes, I suppose you could say I approached this review with some slight amount of bias:
UPDATE (01/29/09):
Hey! Look whose review of L'Antimatiere got quoted for the new LesNez website:
click photo for larger screenshot
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