Cafe Cabanel Teo Cabanel

If you follow the fate of the niche perfume brand Teo Cabanel, you know that the author of Cafe Cabanel, perfumer Cecile Zarokian, has already made her second gourmand-themed sketch this season (the first was Ani Nishane).

Precisely a sketch, because Cafe Cabanel seems to me to be a genre scene from a Parisian morning of a young pretty lady. This morning begins with an attempt to open her eyes after yesterday, find a fresh and preferably her own shirt and go out into the still cool morning air. Black glasses on half of the face, the first cigarette trembling in the hand, a paper cup with red lipstick on the rim in the other hand. In the air is the aroma of bitter coffee with a caloric "bomb" of foamed cream, vanilla, almond and raspberry syrup. Fast carbohydrates and easily digestible fat are needed, of course, to restore strength, the smoky resinous smell of burnt coffee with vanilla is for vigor, and the caramel-sugar fog is the best camouflage on the Paris metro. You can blend into the crowd, dissolve, pass for one of the thousands of strong and independent women.

Cafe Cabanel reminded me of Vanille Fatale Tom Ford. There are the same references to coffee raffs fashionable among millennials, only the coffee is darker roasted, the fillings are more varied and sweeter.

Cafe Cabanel Teo Cabanel 2019

Cecile Zarokyan

Mandarin, coffee, cinnamon, rose, heliotrope, milky and creamy notes, vanilla, tonka beans, caramel, sandalwood, musk.

Sorting through the handful of samples kindly sent along with the new product, I discovered several compositions that for some reason I had not tried before. The brightest star among them is Lace Garden - a photographically accurate portrait of a magnolia flower. Its thick, wax-like, white petals with light pink veins smell in the blackness of a southern night of a sharp, almost bitter, herbal freshness, a dangerous sweetness of dope and a greenhouse air filled with water. This beauty, unfortunately, does not last very long. After a couple of hours, it settles on the skin as a barely discernible white-floral-fresh something.

Lace Garden Teo Cabanel 2015

Lemon, ylang, magnolia, jasmine, tuberose, vanilla, benzoin, powder.

How could a rose lover not notice Early Roses, released back in 2010? I think I've never come across it before, either in bottles or samples. Early Roses is the very same, real, tea rose described in stuffy women's novels, full of sadness and tears. Its sadness is light (and another five paragraphs of blah-blah-blah), and the intricately drawn transparent aroma of pink marmalade, lemon juice and greenery draws in the imagination a disheveled large rose of cream color with a seemingly burnt, dark red border on the petals. Despite the lightness and watercolor-like quality, this is not the rose with which it would be worthwhile to begin acquaintance with the theme. Tea rose is for advanced users and great connoisseurs.

Early Roses Teo Cabanel 2010

Jean_Francois Latty

Red berries, green notes, Bulgarian rose, jasmine, woody-amber accord, white musk.

I thank the director of Teo Cabanel for the samples he sent. I refreshed my impressions and learned where the brand is heading. You can buy a set of samples on their website for 20 euros. They send them to us.

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