Vert d'Encens
Tom Ford (2016)

Vert d’Encens seems to get a lot of criticism and disdain. Maybe that's because it was part of a quartet and never really got the chance to be judged on its own - it certainly didn’t help that it was fast discontinued. Vert des Bois, another of the quartet, got a lot more praise for its more intellectually spurring composition, which probably forced Vert d’Encens into an unfair corner of needing to defend itself. We won’t talk about Vert Boheme here, that was a mess. Then you have the Luca Turin sycophants who read his poor review, decided to smell as he smelled, and add their voices to the echo chamber of their infallible Pope of Perfume. I cannot disagree that Vert des Bois is better composed and more interesting, but I don’t get the smileys when I smell it. In Vert d’Encens, I do - a big ol’ smile.

Like Vert des Bois, Vert d’Encens is an exercise in patchouli but it relies heavily on green incense and resins to carry the message. VdB accentuates the softer nuances of patchouli by pushing forward its fruity, gentle floral, green waxy, and leathery facets, whereas Vert d’Encens takes a far more simplistic approach to patchouli and says “here is the green and resinous side of patchouli, full stop.” Myrrh resins, green and aromatic and salty, are accented by plenty of heliotrope that give an unctuous, nutty quality that smells bright, hard, and a bit sticky. As if that wasn’t enough, pine sap and evergreen balsams are thrown in for yet more greens, more resins, more hard stickiness, plus a decent helping of very comfortable sap-sugar sweetness. They lay over a bed of dry yet loamy and fresh patchouli, like dried compost that still has some green flora stuck in it.

The notes are sort of jammed together, a bit vague and ill-defined at the edges, which gives a very rustic quality to Vert d'Encens like the smells of a newly-built pine log cabin in a damp forest. It is far from the intellectual and precise delivery of Vert des Bois, a welcome deviation from the typical Tom Ford aesthetic, but Vert d’Encens also doesn’t have the typical Tom Ford aesthetic of loud, sexual, over-the-top, trashiness. So, without that and without intellectual curiosity, what is there to it? - Many perfumistas simply wrote it off. That’s a shame. I think its imprecise, rustic simplicity is its charm. When I walk through a sunlit evergreen forest, the smells of the trees sap, bark, needles, and the earth surrounding me, I don’t think of technical precision, chastising the pine or the soil for their rough aromatic overlaps with each other, instead I smile and say “this smells very nice and I am happy to be here.”

Incredible. This is one of the best fragrances I've ever smelled. For fans of incense, green, resiny fragrances. Just wonderful.

What an utterly bizarre smell. Mostly, I smell that tarragon note that's often used to simulate fig, but there's also fresh-mowed grass and an lilies and maybe vetiver. But then there's also this huge salty flour note that smells like play-doh, and the whole thing has a weird milky quality.

It's like someone tried to mix together a bunch of green notes that shouldn't work together, and then they didn't really work together, so they added a truckload of salt and just said "screw it" and put it out.

Don't get me wrong - I like weird scents, and would much rather smell something odd than something commonplace, but the way the tarragon smells meaty while some sort of aloe smells sappy and that play-doh... This is a mess.

The accord of pine with a creamy heliotrope is unusual and I'm never quite sure it's for me. But I enjoy it when I wear it so I guess it is.
Something about it conjures flashbulb childhood memories of climbing in cypress. That's the "vert" I guess. The incense I don't get and can't say it's missed.
A nice oddity.

Sugary sweet, resin straight away. An almost cherry pipe tobacco accord for a few moments. Then a strong heliotrope, deeply floral smell. It begins to move into a powdery feel. Dry. Fir balsam follows and that, seems oddly powdery as well.

The sugary spell continues for awhile. It lightens up a bit, as incense lurks in the background. Fir weaves in and out, along with some other woody note.

Fir balsam slowly begins to increase through the sugary cloud as the base evolves. Heliotrope begins to finally fade slowly into the background... I think Encens Sucre would have been a better name, as this is very much "sweet" to my nose and on my skin. I rather enjoy it though. I'll give it four stars.

Not a fan of earthy scents, but I like this one. Woody and slightly spicy, this one is my favorite in that mini line TF has. Very natural smelling. More of a cool weather fragrance IMO. 8/10