Sumatera smells woods and spices
Sumatera smells like sweet cinnamon, cedarwood, and vanilla. The spices blend is creamy and intoxicating. The cedarwood is well-rounded with the vanilla, making the whole composition warm yet fresh. How the spices combine with the woods is brilliant, well balanced. Overall, I am mesmerized by Sumatera.
Sumatera and its spices
Sumatera welcomes us with the burst of cedarwood, cinnamon, and the sweet orange. The cedarwood is in a nice balance with the spices, with cinnamon in the highlight, building a woody-spicy accord that becomes the backbone of this fragrance. The sweet and herbaceous facet of cedarwood appears at the top with a velvety-powdery note smelling like violet and musk. This woody, musky, and powdery facet conveys a hint of cosmetic notes, slightly animalic, and smells like dark chocolate, which I guess coming from the woody (patchouli), musks, and vanilla accord.
The fragrance develops into a sweet and spicy cinnamon and pepper smell. The sweetness in the middle of this gorgeous blend comes from the mixture of cinnamon and juicy citrus. The cinnamon carries a nice green apple facet with a fruity nuance and crispy texture. Underneath, the black pepper renders its warm, dusty, and slightly smoky feeling to the composition, complexify the spicy and woody facet, giving a more exotic feel.
This woody-spicy fragrance slowly progresses into a beautiful floral background reminiscent of jasmine and ylang-ylang. The animalic facet of jasmine is very faint here, almost none. Instead, this jasmine shows its fruity and opulent characteristic, giving largeness to the body of this composition. Together, the mysterious ylang-ylang amplifies the white floral accord, twist it with its spicy facet, adding freshness. Ylang-ylang’s spicy character also enriches spices, giving a lovely floral silhouette to the accord.
Towards the dry down, the white flowers start exposing its lactonic facet, evoking creaminess. This lactonic facet smoothes the aromatic facet coming from the black pepper. Besides black pepper, there is a fresh-aromatic feeling I usually get from anise or fennel seed. This faint anisic facet gives a salty and ozonic touch, with a hint of medicinal and herbaceous accents. At this moment, Sumatera smells warm and calming.
Sumatera and the woods
The cinnamon progresses nicely to become bolder and sweeter. It settles down well with the woody accords, which now also smelling creamy like sandalwood, with an earthy facet of patchouli, and slightly nutty of vetiver. Somehow, this development reminds me of cypriol as well.
The dry down of this fragrance is woody, powdery-vanilla, and mossy. The wood is dry with a little hint of vanilla, a bit powdery. Although the mossy facet is appealing for its green and fresh properties. A nice thing about moss–it is impactful although at a low dosage. It silently lifts the whole composition, gives consistency and tenacity, which is evident in Sumatera.
Sumatera and Indonesia
In Sumatera, we see a nice development of cinnamon from the top until the dry down. Cinnamon is an exciting spice, challenging to work with because of its power and particular character. However, the cinnamon in Sumatera is very well-balanced, it fuses with other materials very well, creating an exotic feeling. The fragrance’s development reminds me of several things related to my country: the spa, and famous traditional Indonesian drink, jamu. This fragrance has successfully capture Sumatera scents.
Finally, I think Sumatera is very unique. I also don’t recommend you to blind buy this (or any fragrance to be honest), but in this particular case, smell it first. The cinnamon and cedarwood might be too overpowering if you are not familiar with the scent. But overall, I enjoy Sumatera.
Have you smelled this fragrance? Or, do you have any experience with perfumes smelling cinnamon or cedarwood? Comment below 🙂
See you in the next article!
Cheers,
Gia
