Almond Suede
Eau de Parfum, Arquiste (2024)

When I first tried this I smelled it blind, without knowing the name or the notes. I had gone to the boutique to sample A Grove by the Sea, and while I was smelling it I heard another bottle spray. “We also have this one,” the associate handed me a card. I lifted it to my nose and was pleasantly surprised. I hadn’t smelled anything like it before. Sweet, but not overly so. Leathery without being bitter. Then I found out it was named Almond Suede and the pieces clicked together. Usually I avoid almond in perfumery because it smells like almond extract, which I despise. During my time as a pastry chef I avoided it because it overpowered all the other flavors and, to my nose, stank like a cheap grocery store angel food cake. But this smells more of almond flour and sugar, like the filling of galette de rois, an almond croissant, or as the description suggests Spanish mazapan. But don’t let all the pasty talk fool you into thinking this is overly sweet. It isn’t. When I take a deep breath the sweetness hits me first and builds, and just as it approaches the point of being too sweet, the note transforms and becomes a brilliant bolt of soft leather. It’s a suede pillow you can run your hand across, making patterns and erasing them with your fingers. The listed lemon I smell right at first spray and also a bit in the dry down. It’s a mild lemon, not a sparkling lemon. It’s running your finger over the skin of a lemon without scratching the surface. It melds with the sweetness and the leather, like lemonade and black tea in an Arnold Palmer. Honeycomb absolute is listed in the top notes but I smell it more at the end of the dry down. Hours later my skin smells warm and radiates sweetness while my clothes smell of rich suede.
I find I can’t get enough of Almond Suede, which is good because it seems to last forever on me. It hovers around like a gentle coating of powdered sugar, rising into the air up into my nose when I move or adjust my jacket. It’s a strong, versatile scent. I can wear this to the office as a casual work scent, enjoy it on my undershirt during a walk through the woods, or to bed as a comforting fall evening scent. I am not typically a gourmand lover, but this new direction for gourmands may have turned me. Happy to add this bottle to my collection and looking forward to many wears this year and years to come.

When I initially learned of Almond Suede, the idea of almond marzipan had me feeling skeptical—I am persnickety when it comes to gourmands. The market is saturated with all manner of snickerdoodle, marshmallow, the candied; the iced; the frosted; all rendering me nauseous. I also felt that the concept would be difficult for a perfumer to pull off, with marzipan having a subtly granular, clay-like texture to both the touch and the nose. Yet here, the opening does have the expected pierce of bitter almond oil, almost like pure amaretto, soon followed by the nutty, chewy, sweet, yet not overly sugary nature of the confection. But it seamlessly melts into a sonorous—and I mean SONOROUS—suede, like the smell when I would brush my grey Clarks Desert Trek boots back in the day. God I loved that smell. It's here, this is it!

A cistus concrete—NOT a literal concrete accord as Fragrantica would have you believe, but concrete as in the solvent-extracted plant material used in perfume—imparts a spicy, resinous, almost tobacco-like overtone here. Cistus concrete and absolute is extracted from the aerial parts (the stems, leaves, and petioles) of Cistus ladaniferus, where labdanum resin is also obtained. Fascinatingly so, it seems to extend the effect of marzipan into the heart, as a saffron accord amplifies the incoming suede effect (as it's known to do). Then there is the pine tar, and it is smoky, but it's not burnt smelling as cade tar normally would, and has that alluring conifer-needle, sappy sweetness. Now this is the stroke of heaven in Almond Suede, to take this whimsically moorish idea and pilot it in a dramatic direction. It lives somewhere between human warmth and stark piety. The latter may also account for why some feel its intensity ("beast mode!") as a bit overwhelming, but I feel it works here fantastically in the arc of the development.

I know this one is going to be perceived as the most esoteric of the three new Arquiste releases: challenging, unapologetic, but also beguiling in form. I look forward to what Almond Suede 'becomes' when the colder temperatures are here. I have a feeling its reaction on skin meeting the frigid air will reveal more of its story...