Cosmic Wood Eau de Parfum

Ralf Schwieger composed Tory Burch Cosmic Wood Eau de Parfum, and he has done it with five materials, which is restraint of a kind the fragrance counter rarely rewards.

Ambrette opens it and it is the choice that makes the scent. Ambrette is a seed material with a soft, warm, slightly powdery character and a faint fruitiness behind it, and it reads as skin more than as perfume. Cardamom sits beside it, cool and dry with a soapy edge, and the two of them give the opening an understated, almost bare quality. Jasmine and sage make the middle, and they pull in opposite directions on purpose. Jasmine is rich, sweet and heady, sage dry, herbal and faintly bitter, and the result is a floral that never becomes decorative. Then vetiver takes it to the end alone, rooted, dry and green, holding the scent close to the skin for the rest of its wear. The sage is also the material that stops the jasmine from reading as a perfume counter flower, and that is the point of including it.

Five materials means there is little to follow and nothing hidden, and it is better described as a texture than as a story. If you want a fragrance that evolves through several stages, this is not it. If you want something clean, dry and quietly expensive smelling that you can wear to work every day, it is a strong candidate. The name promises more than the composition sets out to deliver, and what it actually offers is quieter and better than the label suggests. The eau de parfum concentration gives it better staying power than the lightness suggests, with modest projection throughout. It reads unisex. Tory Burch founded her American fashion and accessories label in 2004, opening a first store in Nolita in New York, and the fragrance side has been run under an exclusive worldwide licence by the Estee Lauder Companies since an agreement signed in November 2011.