Sel de Vetiver is the sixth fragrance release from the niche house The Different Company, and the second entry by perfumer Celine Ellena, who took over after her father Jean Claude Ellena became house nose at Hermès. Sel de Vetiver has notes of grapefruit, cardamom, Bourbon geranium, lovage, Haitian vetiver, patchouli, iris and ylang ylang.

Sel de Vetiver opens on grapefruit, very pale and soft and lightly sweetened. The patchouli, though subdued in any case, is more noticeable in the top notes than later in the dry down, and there is a green herbal undertone that adds some liveliness to the early stages. As it settles, it gets warmer, dryer and earthier, and in keeping with its name, saltier.

The “scent of salt drying on the skin after bathing in the sea” was given as one of Celine Ellena’s inspirations for the fragrance, and that description is as apt as any: the dry down smells very much like saltwater drying on sun-warmed skin. If I close my eyes and inhale deeply, I can make out a bit of cardamom, but for the most part, the glimmer of liveliness in the opening is smoothed over into something more quiet and hushed, in which no one note really stands out on its own…

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