One good thing about January is there is a little bit of a pause post-Holidays and it allows me to catch up on things which keep getting displaced in my review on-deck circle. One of those new houses which I have been very interested to try is A Lab On Fire. I love their ethos that great perfumers can make interesting perfumes without charging over the top prices to be laudable. As a research chemist, in my day job, I also am just drawn to any fragrance house that has lab in their name. Although in my line of work if the lab is on fire things have gone terribly wrong. In the case of A Lab On Fire I think we are meant to think like the old saying they’re “going like a house on fire” to indicate a lot of creativity. I’ve had the chance to fully experience the first fragrance from A Lab on Fire L’Anonyme ou OP-1475-A which was created by Olivier Polge and one of the later ones Rose Rebelle SC-7545 for which the perfumer is not named but perhaps has the initials SC? Again I have to love the names because I label my experiments “MB-###-A” and these names make me feel like these are ongoing fragrant experiments. So come on up to the lab……

L’Anonyme ou OP-1475-A is an excellent example of how a few well-chosen ingredients by a perfumer like M Polge can produce a very good perfume for $15.That’s right my bottle of L’Anonyme cost me $15. I’ve had many bottles with a zero on the end be much less interesting than this geranium fragrance. A sparkly bergamot comes first followed by a green goddess of a geranium note. I am sure this is just a judicious use of the aromachemical geraniol but it smells more alive than it ought to. Light cedar, the ubiquitous white musk and suede leather complete the notes. In many ways L’Anonyme feels like M Polge is showing by action that an interesting perfume can be created from the most overused and common aromachemicals going. L’Anonyme doesn’t smell cheap or derivative, and considering the price, it is as successful an opening experiment as you could want.

Rose Rebelle SC-7545 is also modestly priced and also really surprisingly good for the price. On the website it is described as a combination of pink rose and cocoa. Both of those notes are there but there are at least a couple of things not listed as well. As with L’Anonyme, Perfumer SC has chosen to work with some of the more common aromachemicals but use them in a uniquely balanced way. A Lab On Fire is owned by S-Perfumes and Rose Rebelle feels like a kindred spirit to 100% Love as it opens with its own berry note of currant along with something green. Then the rose and cocoa take over in the base and here they are desiccated versions of their more common presence. This feels like they have been freeze dried into a fragrant dust and used to infuse this fragrance. The base is a synthetic musk but a full musk not the sheer white kind. Rose Rebelle is page two in the A Lab On Fire notebook that very interesting fragrances can be achieved with common intermediates.

Both L’Anonyme and Rose Rebelle have outstanding longevity and above average sillage.

Now that I’ve been up to the labs I am going to be following these aromatic scientists of the olfactory very closely. Especially when I check out the website and see Dominique Ropion (What We Do In Paris Is Secret) and Thierry Wasser (Sweet Dreams 2003). You can see me shiver with anticipation.

Disclosure: I purchased the bottle of L’Anonyme and purchased a sample of Rose Rebelle from The Perfumed Court.

–Mark Behnke, Managing Editor