Unum Quando Rapita in Estasi
Frankincense is listed twice in Filippo Sorcinelli Unum Quando Rapita in Estasi Extrait de Parfum 100ml, at the top and again at the bottom, which tells you most of what you need to know about where this perfume is going.
It opens resinous and cool. Frankincense is the material responsible, dry and lemony and a little peppery before it turns smoky, with cedarwood beside it adding a sharp, pencil dry edge and lily of the valley providing a thin, dewy green lift that keeps the first minutes from being entirely austere. The heart is short and warm. Clove is hot, dry and faintly medicinal, peach adds a soft fleshy sweetness, and the two of them together put a brief human warmth into the middle of a composition that is otherwise solemn.
Then the resins return in force. Frankincense comes back under fir balsam, which smells of sap and conifer and cold air, while labdanum thickens everything with its sticky dark sweetness. Patchouli and vetiver supply earth and root, and tonka bean and vanilla soften the very end with a dusty, mild sweetness. Eleven materials in total, and the shape is a slow descent from cold smoke into warm resin.
Released in 2019 at extrait concentration, it is built for longevity rather than for volume: expect it on skin well into the next day and on a coat for longer, with a trail that stays within arm's reach after the first hour. Winter and evenings suit it, it reads as unisex, and it is at its best in large cold rooms, which is presumably the point.
The man behind it, Filippo Sorcinelli, is an organist and photographer based in Mondolfo in the Marche, and he opened the LAVS atelier in 2001, making vestments and church furnishings by hand, work that led to commissions reaching the Vatican, among them vestments for Pope Benedict XVI and for Pope Francis's inaugural Mass in 2013. He began releasing perfume in 2014 with the UNUM collection, dedicated to the atelier, and his work as an organist feeds the scents as directly as his work with cloth does.
Please note: images are a guide only. Packaging and bottle design may occasionally differ from those shown due to manufacturer updates or promotions.
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