Larmes du Désert
Atelier Des Ors (2015)

A lightly spiced amber with a nice woody base. Projection is below average but a nice fragrance nonetheless. Nothing groundbreaking, but this can be worn year round. 7.5/10

A superb, super polished incense with cypress, resins and musk. Very realistic, very balsamic with minimal sweetness, classy fragrance that is absolutely worth trying.

A mellow, calm blend of incense and woods. It’s mostly woody with just a light touch of incense. It falls a bit flat for me since I personally prefer more smoke and amber. Projection is modest, but I might need to retest this one. It was my first sample from the brand, and I’m a bit underwhelmed. The bottles are nice, though, and the gold flakes that come out with each spray are a interesting.

"Where deep in the desert twilight
Sand melts in pools of the sky
Darkness lays her crimson cloak
Your lamps will call, call me home..."

Atelier des Ors Larmes du Desert is a 2015 release my very first try from this house, and it's instantly a sweet, resinous, slightly spicy and even seemingly slightly fruity mix that's both fun and a bit intriguing. The resinous quality leans toward incense, albeit not heavily smoky, with some contribution from guaiac wood, and some punchy, spicy bits from cypress and patchouli, but I feel like I'm missing something sweet in the mix, or perhaps the benzoin is just that sweet in this case.

It's an easy winner for fans of resinous fragrances, especially those that like their fragrances to lean more toward incense or sweet instead of animalic. It's not at all an animalic amber, in my opinion, even if there are spicier and woodier aspects of it, and in total, it's decently sweet on my skin, which I love.

It performs reasonably well, albeit slightly less than I would've expected, given the prominence of resins in the description and note breakdown, but surely still satisfactory. It comes in EDP concentration and is sold at $275 for 100ml at Luckyscent.

Overall, I love it, and would love to have a bottle.

8 out of 10

Wow what a beautiful take on the Desert themed amber that is a genre now starting to gather pace in the niche world after LADDM . Atelier des ors version tho has literally blown me away, it is so well thought out from top to bottom and brimming with luxury, if you have tried jubilation 25 then you'll be in a similar ballpark with this, Larmes tho is a touch brighter with the citrus notes adding great elevation in the early stages and it performs better, incense isn't overly pronounced but definitely there and obvious, it blends into the composition with the other woods and flickers of Cypress to bring a touch of masculinity to the fragrance, I really don't feel any dryness in this as many people have been reporting, on my skin the amber tones and the resins add a delicate sweetness that keeps it very approachable but at the same time royal and luxurious. This has been my most favourite incense and amber discovery to date, mainly due to my love of cypress and galbanum, Larmes appears to have bridged two separate genres into one fragrance perfectly.