Marc Atlan: PETITE MORT: Parfum D'une Femme: A Review

The black box as black hole, as sepulchre, as bottomless pit....and within all that a fragrance meant to evoke orgasm.
Marc Atlan's delicately under-lit installation for the release of his debut fragrance "Petite Mort" houses a tiny bottle of the parfum in a black room that lends itself to many a metaphor. The black box as black hole, as sepulchre, as bottomless pit....and within all that a fragrance meant to evoke the total abandon of orgasm. Entering the room , the scent in question is distant and faint ... elegant yet completely unlike any commercial fragrance I've ever encountered.

It is when Marc produces a black canister, the base of which is doused in "Petite Mort" that I get a full whiff of the "juice". It is actually really extreme in a mad way. There's a floral and something like incense sweetening the flowers but the final memory is of this raw, pungent animal note that is rank, ripe and rich. It is behaving more like an oil than a spray. It is heavy and dense and illogically opulent and inarguably like something that would come off a human body. The scent of sexual aftermath in the fragrance is unnervingly vivid. "Petite Mort" never touches my skin...30 minutes after the encounter I'm recalling it only with olfactory memory but that final twist in the parfum, that thing that was civet-like at the end...it is an epic, hedonistic, insanely self-indulgent proposition. I live!

Available starting April 2011. Limited edition of 100 bottles. For purchase information please refer to petitemortparfum.com