Top 10 Modern Retro Perfumes + Guerlain Vetiver Fauve review (Delphine Jelk; 2025) –

I suspect Guerlain didn’t think that a vetiver composition would turn out to be polarising, but this is exactly what seems to be happening with Vetiver Fauve, their latest addition to L’Art & La Matiere. I featured it in a recent episode of Love At First Scent, together with a video in which I presented my list of the Top 10 best ‘modern retro’ perfumes: scents that nod to the past in a knowing, ironic way. Here are links to both videos: Guerlain Vetiver Fauve review — Top 10 best ‘modern retro’ perfumes.

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Frederic Malle Lipstick Rose (Ralf Schwieger) 6:19
Bienaime Monsieur (Patrice Revillard) 12:25
Frassai Blondine (Yann Vasnier) 16:30
Le Labo Ylang 49 (Frank Voelkl) 22:00
Papillon Dryad (Liz Moores) 25:11
Honourable mentions 29:03
Parfum D’Empire Un Bel Amour D’Ete (Marc-Antoine Corticchiato) 32:49
Tom Ford Beau De Jour (Antoine Maisondieu) 36:18
Etat Libre D’Orange The Afternoon Of A Faun (Ralf Schwieger) 40:10
Jouissance La Bague D’O 44:26
Puente Chyprelia (Eliam Puente) 46:55

The jury is still out as far as Vetiver Fauve is concerned. Personally, I find its contrast of tropical, fig-and-pineapple elements against woody rootiness quite compelling, not least because of the use a bracingly dry cypriol note in the base. What’s more, to my nose, the scent’s publicity material is spot on for once: this stuff really does feel like some vividly green succulent growing to turgid life beneath a dense, jungle canopy. It isn’t like the brand’s classic Vetiver, but then it isn’t trying to be. Here, something more dangerous and more mysterious is at play, and even if the intrigue isn’t sustained all the way through to the end (the drydown is innocuously woody), the journey to the conclusion is possessed of a strange, unsettling magnetism.

Persolaise

[Review samples provided by the brands.]

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