01
The brief
Aurèle asked for access to a reading room at the Bibliothèque Mazarine outside opening hours and sat in it for two afternoons. His note afterwards was one line: the smell is the shelving, not the books.
Deux Heures
A library that has been locked for the weekend
3 reviews~11h reported
Paper, cedar and still air. A dry, quiet extrait that behaves like a room rather than a person.
In stock — dispatched within two working days
- Longevity
- 10–12 hours
- Sillage
- Very close throughout
- Season
- Autumn and winter
- Perfumer
- Aurèle Kestenbaum, 2023
Every order includes two 2ml samples of your choosing. Complimentary shipping above €150. Unopened bottles may be returned within 14 days.
The composition
Top
First ten minutes
Dust · Dry paper · Black pepper
Heart
The next two hours
Cedar shelving · Old leather · Iris root
Base
What stays
Vetiver · Benzoin · Tonka
How it was made
02
The material
Iris root at extrait concentration is the expensive part — 4.2% of a butter that takes six years from rhizome to usable material. It gives the dry, cool, faintly powdery quality that reads as paper. Cedar does the shelving; the dust is a trace of a nitro musk substitute.
03
On skin
Almost no projection after twenty minutes, which is intended. This is a fragrance for the person wearing it and for anyone who comes within a foot of them, and for nobody else in the room.
Worn by
4.7
- 12h on skin
It lasts for a full day
One spray in the morning and it is still faintly there when I take my coat off at night. The iris is extraordinary.
- 11h on skin
Quiet and expensive-smelling
Nobody will compliment you on this from across a room, because they cannot smell it. That is the point.
- 10h on skin
The dust note is real
I did not believe a dust accord could be pleasant. It is, though it took me a week to be sure.
Wear alongside
Wet oak · Tobacco leaf
from €115
Tobacco leaf · Leather
from €190
Iris root · Papyrus
from €200