PROFUMUM VANITAS: Vanitas is an odd duck — part sweet vanilla, part sour myrrh, and with a sprinkling of mellow orange blossoms across the surface, resulting in a fragrance that’s packed with more symbolism than your average Shakespeare Cliff Notes.
The term “vanitas” refers to a style of still-life painting that emphasizes the brevity of life and the emptiness of human achievement; hence, the often side by side placement in the Dutch paintings of cascading, blooming flowers and a human skull.
“I’ll get you, my pretties!”
In the case of Profumum’s Vanitas, the idea of death entwining ambition is expressed utilizing vanilla and orange blossom (stand-ins for life and purity) over a layer of myrrh (the precious oily resin in which dead kings were embalmed). Other reviewers have stated that all they get out of Vanitas is candy and flowers, and while the lush sweetness is indeed prominent, the earthy, chilly undertones of myrrh are ever-present, like a whiff of Grim Reaper as you take your first bite of birthday cake.
And some people think you were swinging that stick at the piñata . . .
Listed fragrance notes: vanilla, myrrh, orange flower and sandalwood. I found the vanilla enjoyable due to the dark, resinous undercurrent curbing its more excessive qualities (and vice versa). The sandalwood is present in the base for smoothing, filling and enhanced longevity, and the longevity of Vanitas is indeed exceptional (which is kind of ironic, when you consider it).
***Side note: my favorite watch (ever!) is the Corum Vanitas.
MICHELE BERGMAN BLACK AMBER: Black Amber is a dark, thick perfume oil with a sweet but decidedly woodsy and vegetal nature. There’s nothing powdery or overly sugared about it, and it gets drier and woodsier as time goes on.
Listed fragrance notes: dark and light Tunisian amber, vanilla and patchouli. The patchouli is likely responsible for the scent’s somewhat leafy, tree bark quality that’s wrapped around the amber and vanilla at its core.
Sakecat experienced Black Amber as more sweet and powdery than I found it to be, but she wrote that it’s “oddly comforting in its simplicity.”
The longevity of Black Amber is good — it’s an oil so it keeps close to the skin, but it stays and glows for hours. Sakecat disagrees with me about the longevity, too (“This scent seems to fade quickly for an oil”).
Go figure.
***Note: I have a fairly sensitive nose when it comes to patchouli, especially the genuine stuff, which is likely why I experience Black Amber as wrapped in leafy, woodsy essences when it’s meant to have only a “hint” of patchouli. Others with noses not so hyper-tuned to the patchouli wave-length will probably experience Black Amber in the sweet, powdery way that Sakecat wrote of it.
