Elixir Eau de Parfum

Five materials, and two of them are resins: Elie Saab Elixir Eau de Parfum is a deliberately short composition and one of the quieter things the house has released.

Mandarin orange and neroli open it, the fruit sweet and soft, the neroli bitter and green at the edges, a citrus flower with the twig still attached rather than a sweet bloom. Iris is the entire middle, and it is the material that gives the fragrance its character, cool and rooty with a dry powderiness like a freshly starched shirt. Then myrrh and benzoin close it. Myrrh is dusty, slightly bitter and faintly medicinal, benzoin is sweeter and more resinous, close to the smell of a candle burning in a cold room, and the pair of them turn the iris from something cosmetic into something solemn. There is no long evolution here. What you have at twenty minutes is broadly what you have at four hours, with the resins gradually taking over from the citrus. The concentration buys longevity rather than loudness, so it stays on the wearer rather than filling a room.

It was launched in 2023 and it suits cold weather, evenings and anyone who finds most modern women's perfume too sweet. The powder and resin together read as grown up rather than pretty, and it is one of the few fragrances at this level that could pass for niche if you did not know the bottle. If you have tried iris perfumes before and found them cold, the benzoin here is what makes the difference.

Elie Saab founded his couture house in Beirut in 1982, when he was eighteen, and built his reputation on evening gowns and on dressing women for red carpets. The fragrances carrying his name are made by outside specialists, and this one belongs to the smaller, more austere end of them.