Fumabat

Fumabat: an unusual name for unusual perfume. Parid Cefa takes familiar materials – pine, carnation, frankincense, patchouli – and rearranges them in a novel way that that you don’t smell what you’re expecting to smell. Expectations are upended. For example, despite the presence of mint, green tea, and galbanum in the topnotes, Fumabat is neither green nor particularly fresh.

Instead, it’s a tarry spice amber with a big old school drydown of oakmoss, patchouli, and soapy leather. Surprised that fragrances with such throwback appeal are being produced in small artist’s ateliers in Brooklyn? Yeah, so are we. In a good way. For all its retro style, Fumabat feels exciting and new. We are taken on a dizzyingly ride from spicy carnation, oakmoss, and galbanum, which appear to reference classic perfumery, to exotic, smoky frankincense, which brings us straight to the sultan’s harem, and even detouring briefly to a grungy, 1970’s style patch. Somehow, Fumabat manages to pull everything together brilliantly, as if perfumery had always been missing a vital piece of the puzzle – Arabian Nights meets Burt Reynolds – and this brand stepped in to provide it.