Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab's Magdalene

MAGDALENE
A stirring yet gentle perfume. The scent of love and devotion mingled with an undercurrent of heart-rending sorrow.  A bouquet of white roses, labdanum, and wild orchid.

Magdalene is a sadly discontinued scent from the Sin & Salvation (General Catalog) collection. In the bottle, what first strikes my nose is a sharp, green rose note. BPAL roses are really unpredictable, though- they can range from absurdly stuffy to hysterically shrill to utterly deranged. This is an unexpected BPAL rose, with a pleasant, rather "normal" floral roundness, a reasonable, refreshing greenness, and an unusual depth.

On first application, Magdalene has a burnt note that reminds me of the off top notes of my vintage Le Galion Snob. There is something about these burnt chemicals hovering over an otherwise pleasant floral that I really love. It's like a synthetic rebelliousness, a shabby chic dress, the chaotic beauty of imperfection.

Magdalene then settles down into one of my favorite BPAL rose scents. Everything about the description is true: roses, orchids, labdanum; stirring yet gentle; love and devotion mingled with heart wrenching sorrow. The order of words is important here- it is first, love and devotion, then sorrow. The sweet, gorgeous floral notes are grounded by the labdanum, and it is the conflict between them that makes the emotion of this perfume so expansive.

It reminds me of a more gothic take on the same expansive conflict present in Guerlain's Après L'ondée. Après L'ondée is a play between wet, tearful florals: rose, iris, and heliotrope; and the grounding bouquet de Provence: thyme, rosemary, and sage. The result is revelatory: it is the shift from rain to sunlight, from tears to a smile.

Whereas Après L'ondée has a holy, transcendent quality to it, what I love about Magdalene is its shift, not to clarity, but to darkness. Après L'ondée's play between sorrow and hope seems to pray that hope will conquer. Magdalene, on the other hand, lets the darkness in, and the play between love and sorrow suggests that sorrow will win. The scent passively, but seductively, accepts this idea, and dries to a dark, rosy labdanum. The entire experience is sexy, complicated, emotional and beautiful.

Guerlain's Après L'Ondée

Certain scents are difficult to explain but easily inspire the adjectives "breathtaking" and "heartbreaking." Après L'Ondée is one of these scents. Gaia, the Non-Blonde describes smelling Après L'Ondée in parfum "like entering a dream. It can be familiar, like a memory you can't quite place but you know you've been there, maybe in your subconsciousness."

Like any other art form, at its finest perfume can convey a distinct idea or emotion. The more complex the idea, the more moving the artwork. Après L'Ondée means "after the rain shower," and between the floral, herbal, earthy, and watery notes, it literally translates as a garden after the rain. Yet there is something more to this scent, that inspires consistently more romantic reviews.

At its debut, La Liberté said it had "something of the melancholy of a poet's thoughts." (Monsieur Guerlain). Turin's review is also full of dark metaphors, describing the base accord as a "funeral", but for the fact that "Guerlain suffuses the whole thing with optimistic sunlight by using, as in so many of their classic fragrances, a touch of what a chef would call bouquet de Provence: thyme, rosemary, sage. This discreet hint of earthly pleasures is what makes Après L'Ondée smile through its tears."

Après L'Ondée does smile through its tears, for the scent of the earth following the rain parallels a feeling of calm after the passing of grief. The sadness behind Après L'Ondée makes the beautiful notes all the more real, precious, and poignent. This scent brings you deep within your own reflections. It is undoubtably one of the greatest perfumes ever made.