I have been a soccer fan for many years. It is funny to think how far things have come. Now I can watch and follow my favorite players and teams effortlessly. In 1986, I couldn’t know this future was coming. With the World Cup in Mexico that summer I decided to go follow the whole tournament since I believed it was the best chance I would have to see the players I had only read about for real. For nearly a month I traveled from stadium to stadium trying to see all 24 teams. I spent many nights sleeping outside. Most mornings the scent of the air which woke me had this great vegetal tang. There are many perfumes which have had a passing resemblance to that but it was only recently that one absolutely captured what I remember; Arquiste Esencia de el Palacio Vetiveres.
Creative Director Carlos Huber and perfumer Rodrigo Flores-Roux have collaborated on a collection of fragrances exclusively for an upscale Mexican department store; El Palacio de Hierro. Both men have roots in Mexico and all three of these perfumes feel like perfume love letters to what the country means to them. Vetiveres is meant to be representative of the future. The perfume that has resulted is a fantastic interpretation of vetiver where the greener aspects are amplified.
Rodrigo Flores-Roux (l.) and Carlos Huber
In the last few years vetiver-centric perfumes have become much more versatile because there have been more versions of this raw material to use. Sr. Flores-Roux now has such an array of choices it allows him to create almost any shade of vetiver. What he does for Vetiveres is form a dense vegetation accord. There is a smell to the dense jungle in the tropics when the summer sun is high in the sky. The nucleus of Vetiveres is the mixture of dense growing green things with a bit of the woods way underneath.
In the early moments, I think the vetiver used is a fraction where the woodiness is very attenuated. To combine with that Sr. Flores-Roux caresses the vetiver with myrtle and artemesia. This forms that scent of the morning I spoke of in the first paragraph. It is recognizably vetiver but it is different in presence, pleasingly so. In the heart the vetiver begins to deepen. Here Sr. Flores-Roux chooses to bracket it with incense and labdanum. It elongates the green in what I found surprising. The resins almost step in for the typical woody underpinning of vetiver. Cedar and guaiac provides the woods that have been missing and patchouli bring the earthy aspect. The longer Vetiveres goes on the vetiver expands its presence until at the end it is beautifully displayed.
Vetiveres has 10-12 hour longevity and above average sillage.
I believe that Vetiveres not only represents the future of Mexico as much as it represents the future of what a vetiver perfume can be. As I wore Vetiveres I realized it had been a while since I wore a vetiver perfume which engaged me as much as Vetiveres has. Maybe it is because it is a scent memory of my summer of 1986. More likely it is because Sr. Flores-Roux has found something new within vetiver.
Disclosure: This review was based on a sample provided by Arquiste.
–Mark Behnke
