DARK REBEL

A fresh current trend is that of new animalics, and  played well and in the right doese, these are certainly sensual.

One perfect example for this is Rodrigo Flores-Roux' 'Dark Rebel' (John Varvatos, 2015), in which we find a pretty extreme castoreum/civet-type animality in the sytle of old-fashioned leathery fougères such as 'Jules' (Dior, 1980) by Jean Martel for castoreum or 'Kouros' (Y. Saint Laurent, 1981) by Pierre Bourdon.

Flores-Roux takes this leathery animality, and dilutes it in his signature style with cardamom and clary sage.

An animalic whiff is present right from the first sniff, but 'Dark Rebel' starts like the boozy '1 Millions' with a rum accord on davana oil, and at the bar we then find the black leather jacket boosted with nutmeg and styrax and softened with fir resin, and then diluted with cardamom and clary sage. The darkness though is due to black pepper and this is carried from top to fond with the modern peppery note of Akigalawood /rotundone.

'Dark Rebel' dries down into a tobacco leaves accord with musk and wood linking to the boozy top some juniper berry note. Longevity and projection are not too outstanding, but the peppery animalic note of 'Dark Rebel' on cardamom and clary sage actually is groundbreaking. So that is quite something that could be extended into a full-blown trend both in feminine and masculine perfumery. Of course the animalic odorants are very oldfashioned and retro, but the context makes them shine! 

Or as John Varvatos would say: "From Darkness comes Light!"

https://youtu.be/BUJgaTqP2cI : this is the 'Dark Rebel' (John Varvatos, 2015) ad clip that makes light out of darkness.