Lost in Heaven
Francesca Bianchi (2019)

Lost in Heaven is, mostly, appropriately named. There is definitely a repeat of a stylistic theme in Lost, emphasis more on “repeat” than on “theme”, which I’ll get to. But, first let’s take the second word of the title, Heaven. It does smells heavenly. It is beautifully floral and musky. Francesca Bianchi harkens back to the civet driven perfumes of long ago with Lost’s animal musks, compounded and enhanced by sweet and floral beeswax, leathery and animalic castoreum, woody and earthy labdanum, and sweaty/salty animalic ambroxan. Hesperidics at the top create very blurry lines between citrusy jasmine and banana-starchy ylang ylang, which then blur again with Bianchi’s favorite orris butter absolute to continue the vein of the starchiness of the ylang ylang and the floral-indolic qualities of jasmine. A cumin note breaks out in the heart section to add a human body touch connecting to the animalic notes in the base. If heaven is a kaleidoscope, a mosaic, of warm, beautiful, loving, skin electrifying lights and sensations, the perfume does it.

Here comes the second part, where we’ll focus on the title word “Lost” and the “repeat stylistic theme”, mainly the tendency of Bianchi’s perfumes to have too much of a devil-may-care/kitchen-sink approach to the materials. Most of the perfume’s accords and materials do seem to be lost, where their lack of individuality contributes to your nose sensing more of a morass and only-occasionally a kaleidoscope or mosaic. You only need to look so far as the long notes list from the brand to realize this is the case. The hesperidic and floral top notes overlay each other in a languid but at least somewhat beautiful way, but only briefly. It becomes far less defined in the movement to the heart where the orris, sweet woods, and animalic-musk elements take over, where Bianchi’s signature concoction begins that is used in many of her perfumes. The cumin note is about the only definitive and durable note to separate this from other Bianchi perfumes. Then, finally, an imperceptible bordering-on sloppy dry down to sweet woods and earth (also a signature). Now, this can work; just ask Tauer - referencing his many ambers, specifically; his definitions are noticeably better - and Gardoni, who Bianchi’s style shares much in common. After you get through two to four perfumes, it becomes a question as to how much more attention (and money) you want to give the brand if you’re going to be smelling very nearly the same exact thing from perfume to perfume just tweaked ever so slightly by minutely lived and meek top notes. Bianchi’s saving grace is that her cocktail is beautiful, but are those short-lived and relatively undefined hesperidics and florals at the top enough to make me think this perfume is worth my hard-earned cash to add to my collection in addition to as-yet another perfume from the brand following the same modus-operandi? No, it isn’t. If this is one of the first from the brand you discover, you’ll love it; if it’s a later one, you’ll probably be bored, and that’s the rub - the timing of when you experience the brand and the order of perfumes you smell will dictate what perfume you like or love… or are a bit bored by. So, that’s why my rating: if it was one of the first I tried, thumbs up, but it’s a later one. Fair? Probably not. But neither is this use of my time or money.

Opens as a cumin solifore. Soon mellows into a cumin floral powder animalic. There is something addictive about this perfume but not sure I can wear this in public.

With a list of 22 notes, this one surely qualifies as a retro-style "kitchen sink" fragrance. Opening with a big burst of sweet, hothouse florals & a whiff of pencil shavings, the citrus notes are very subtle, & there's a leathery castoreum underpinning it all. A few moments in, the spices become apparent, then after an hour it smooths out into a floral musk, mostly ylang ylang, but still with that leathery undertone. From here it slowly softens until iris dominates the base. Twelve hours in l can still clearly smell it on my arm: from afar it has quite a clean vibe, but sniffing up close l still detect the castoreum purring away beneath.
Excellent performance from a bold & assertive fragrance, l really enjoyed this one!

I can never tell if Lost in Heaven is a civety floral or a floral civet. There's a brocaded sourness of honey, pale ale, and resin in the far drydown that gives it something to rest against. But mostly this is a bunch of dollhead-sweet flowers blown out into a diffuse cloud of satiny musks and underlined with something very, very unclean – like leaning in to kiss and girl and catching a suggestion of unwashed pillowcases, scalp, and skin that's already been licked.

At first, Lost in Heaven reminds me very much of other vaguely retro indie floral civets (or civety florals), especially Maria Candida Gentile's irisy Burlesque – a mini of which I bought for myself as a birthday present and am rapidly burning through – and Mardi Gras by Olympic Orchids. Then it strikes me that it's not only the civet (or technically, the ambergris in the case of Lost in Heaven) that's linking all these scents in my mind, but a certain indie treatment of the iris, or orris, that they all share. I've smelled it in Andy Tauer's iris-centric work too, most notably in Lonesome Rider and his more recent Les Années 25, and it runs like a hot streak through Francesca Bianchi's work.

The only way I can describe this specifically indie orris treatment is this: take a huge mineral-crusted rock from the beach, wipe it down quickly with a lemony disinfectant, stick it in a clear glass kiln and turn up the heat to 1370 degrees C until it vaporizes, filling the closed-in space with a glittering miasma of acid, mica, and lime-like tartness. I have a suspicion that a matchstick's worth of Ambrox or Cetalox is the fuse that ignites the orris here, with castoreum creating that dusty, soot-like dryness that approaching freshly tanned leather or suede.

The end result is a rather sour and acid-tinged iris that smells like you're smelling the material diffused in the air after a lab explosion rather than from anything growing in nature. Actually, to be fair – I've smelled this ‘hot lava stone' treatment of orris in landmark Guerlains too, most notably in Attrape-Coeur (one of my all-time favorite scents), which layers a dollop of peach and raspberry jam over a bed of these hissing-hot iris rocks and watches for the chemical reaction. Fridge-cold jam against hot minerals, with a side of sweet, rubbery dollhead, all blown out into sour, almost boozy mist – well, what's not to like, really?

Lost in Heaven is Francesca Bianchi's one-two sucker punch – biff, a heat blast of a fully stoked mélange of spices (cinnamon and cumin to the fore), resins and pushy animalic notes; bam, a condensed fug of uber-honeyed florals. This is Nicolaï's kitchen queen Maharinih slugging it out in the boxing ring of perfume maximialism with some dirty-panties mixed floral of yore. Although the materials used are top-notch, the composition suffers from too many bold personalities trying to claim their space on this crowded dancefloor (and yes, Heaven was a bit like that as I recall, despite the music being utter shite). It falls to the patchouli in the base to plead for unity and it makes some headway in that direction, but the going is bumpy. Finally the florals are pretty much sent into banishment and this becomes one of those hot-under-the-collar, growling spicy orientals that, I find, are best admired from a safe distance.
Assertiveness training in a bottle, should one require such a thing.