Slumberhouse Baque (Josh Lobb, 2012)

★ ★ ★ ★ — excellent

Slumberhouse’s Josh Lobb has developed quite a reputation in the fragrance community for putting out highly idiosyncratic perfumes like Norne. In a fragrance world where everyone is trying to hitch a ride on the oudh train, Josh continues to put out scents with notes that read like a page out of a piece of perfume fairytale: Fog caked needle, lichen, fern, moss, hemlock, incense. Made using very high quality ingredients that often sell out quickly, people often trade Slumberhouse decants on basenotes, Fragrantica, and eBay.

There is no doubt that Slumberhouse’s scents are unique. The question, I think, you have to ask with a Slumberhouse perfume is: do I want to wear this?

Notes

On Fragrantica, Baque is classified as an Oriental Fougere, but to me it feels more like a boozy, barely-oriental kinda-gourmand, which is to say, Baque defies easy classification.

Baque definitely has reminiscences of the much-adored (and now discontinued) Kiste, but this is a less sweeter, drier, “dirtier” Kiste. I find Baque to be boozy, fruity, with notes of wet tobacco, generally leaning dry.

Baques’s official notes list:

Apricot, cedar, straw, vanilla, tobacco leaf, davana, ambergris, parchment

Baque opens with a blast of ripe stone fruits, maybe like a heavily spiced Boulevardier, the bittersweet interplay between Campari and Vermouth quite fitting. It evolves to become drier, with notes of wet tobacco and stone fruits (although I can’t specifically detect apricot) swirled in together, propped up by a faint base of cedar and ambergris, all rounded off with vanilla. I can’t detect individual notes of davana (artemisia), but I suspect it’s contributing to the medicinal herbal vermouth-like notes. Baque, while not linear on my skin, doesn’t quite go through a range of evolution, eventually settling into a dry resinous vanillic base that’s very pleasant indeed.

Baque is truly unique, although not especially challenging, and it may not be love-at-first-sniff – Baque demands a reassessment of your assumptions of what fragrance should smell like; and then it tames you: you fall in love with it.

Emily’s Scent Scape

You're in a dimly lit cocktail bar, the kind where you can just tell them what you like and they'll make you the perfect drink, suited to your tastes, boozy and exquisitely rounded, freeing you of even the possibility of making the wrong choice. A non-threateningly handsome bartender in a vest (but no mustache; let's not be ridiculous) is doing just that. The little tray of garnishes is not the usual day-old citrus wedges and olives, but instead a delicate lineup of jammy dried fruits and jars of spices. Is that cayenne pepper?

The bartender levels his eyes on your drink, a chemist's concentration as he squeezes a retro-looking dropper of vanilla. It's the kind of place, you recognize, organized around the aesthetic of itself. You know it's meant to be instagrammed: there's a fiddle-leaf fig in the corner and the edison bulbs are throwing off just enough light that an iPhone camera can capture the vibe. And yet, the vibe does its job. As you sit here enjoying this perfectly tailored drink, you feel swathed in the easy, warm comfort of this place, and you know already that it will follow you into the dry and chilly evening outside. That as you make your gently tipsy way home, you'll carry with you the warm yellow fuzz of the light bulbs and a soft trace of vanilla.

When to wear

While this would probably work for cool spring and fall days, for me this is definitely a cozy, fall scent. 

Projection, Sillage and Longevity

On my skin, projection is moderate and sillage is moderate. Longevity is easily upwards of eight hours, often lasting the entire day, although that’s all base notes.

Where to buy

Like I mentioned before, it’s very hard to find Slumberhouse perfumes in general, and when you do, they sell out pretty quick, so I actually blind-bought my full bottle from Luckyscent, hoping that if I didn’t end up liking it, there’s probably someone else who would want to buy it off me.

Slumberhouse Baque is a parfum extrait, and is currently available only in 30ml, at $180. I hope you get lucky and can snag a bottle at Luckyscent.