New Niche Perfume Review: By Kilian Playing With the Devil – The Devil Isn’t Winning This Game

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I have been longing to love one of the perfumes in the By Kilian In the Garden of Good and Evil collection, because I want the dang box. I am in lust with that goofy, fat, insolent gold snake curled on that pristine white plastic box that can double as an evening clutch. The series explores the concept of original sin and forbidden fruit, and I like fruit in perfume. I just can’t quite find the love for this collection yet. The latest launch, Playing With the Devil, is a veritable fruit salad, so I was alternately hopeful and nervous. Lots of fruit can be a wonderful thing, or not.

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Snake by Lynette Shelley

Opening with a burst of blood orange, the fragrance is bright and cheerful at first.  However, something starts to go a bit wrong after about ten minutes. Perfumer Calice Becker, who is exceptionally talented, has created a fragrance that goes from promising to cloying in very little time. This fruit salad becomes an overcooked compote, with too much vanilla and not enough brandy. The acidic blood orange in the top notes dissipates and becomes consumed by sugar. Maybe tonka bean, benzoin, and vanilla are overkill, and a bigger dollop of the snap of the pimiento would give the perfume some lift. As the perfume dries down, it becomes a bit sour, like under-ripe cafeteria fruit masked by syrup. I’m sorry to say that this perfume will not be the one I buy for the box.

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Serpent and Cross by E.W. Ringstaff

Playing With the Devil isn’t bad, and I know it will find fans. It’s just not what I have come to expect from a line of perfumes that I initially thought was over-priced, over-hyped, and ridiculous before it won me over completely and emptied out my wallet. The Oeuvre Noir and Arabian Nights collections are both wonderful, and the Asian Tales fragrances, though not to my taste, are well-done. I’m beginning to think that In the Garden of Good and Evil is simply targeted to a market demographic that I am not a part of; the pink, fruity, sugary crowd gone upscale.

Maybe somebody who doesn’t like their snake box will send me theirs (wink, nudge).

Notes:  blood orange, black currant, peach, lychee, pepper, pimento, cedar, sandalwood, patchouli, rose, jasmine, tonka bean, benzoin and vanilla.

Disclosure: This review was based on a sample provided by Saks Fifth Avenue in San Francicsco.

Tama Blough, Senior Editor

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7 comments

  • I would think a scent called Playing With the Devil would have a dark feel, with smoke, incense and perhaps tar or an animalic feel. I like a few scents from the line and pulled the trigger on Straight to Heaven, but do agree it’s over-priced for what it is.

  • Francesca B says:

    Well-written review Tama. Maybe one of your men friends will give you the clutch. I wonder what LT will make of this scent. Isn’t he all about Calice Becker?

  • Dear Tama
    There seems to be a collective air of expectation disappointed over this mini range.
    What a shame this fares no better… ‘”over cooked compote” is not a scent this Dandy wishes to be associated with.
    Yours ever
    The Perfumed Dandy

  • Hi Francesca,

    I just want to remind you that the vast majority of perfumers work from an olfactory brief supplied by a creative director. A master perfumer can work for a range of houses, from niche to prestige to mass-market. I am sure that Ms. Becker followed her brief, as this is a well-crafted scent like any of the Kilian line. Mr. Kilian does not release fragrances that he feels do not meet his vision.

    Thanks for the compliment on the piece, an maybe one of my male perfumista pals will follow your hint.
    T

  • Over-cooked compote ala Uncle Serge? Because I don’t mind fruity if it’s well done, but the stewed fruit note that the Lutens often come with doesn’t work for me at all.

    I prefer my “real life” fruit raw rather than cooked and I am beginning to think it’s the same with my fragrances!