La Fumée Alexandrie Miller Harris for women and men

Mostly rose and incense on my skin but there's a lot else going on in the scent and I really like it. For me it definitely is evocative of the Arab Middle East. Has a little of the powdery (amber?) punch of Davidoff's Leather Blend but only a little. This is a far more restrained fragrance, though I really like both.

I'm not an expert on rose notes in perfume--I mostly shied away from them for years--but I find the rose in this quite full, sweet and somehow deep. It definitely seems more like a ripe pink or red rose than a watery, lemony cream or white one but I think that it does have some of that fresh green underlying focus or whatever. It reminds me of (pink) Turkish delight. As I don't have a whole lot of experience with rose notes in other fragrances, my frame of reference for comparison is limited, but this rose note reminds me of that in Diptyque's L'Ombre dans l'Eau and of the much less obvious, probably leaner, pink rose that I find in Clinique Aromatics Elixir.

Wow!! A perfume with cumin that I actually love! Granted it's only a small amount, but takes nothing away from this rose/oud/incense delight. The rose in quite fresh and green, not my usual preference when it comes to rose in perfume, but it works her by cutting through the richness of the oud, amber, and spices. I'm testing it for the first time, so I will need more time to reach a final verdict. There is a plasticky note that emerges after the top notes settle down and I'm not sure how it will effect my overall opinion, but for now, I love it.

First impressions: All the other notes weave to be a bed for the rose to sit on. It treads lightly, but bewitching is still an apt description. It's a beautiful scent, but I do find myself wishing the smoke and other notes challenged the rose more. They're almost conniving. Something about this isn't trustworthy. It makes me feel cool. Bare tree branches in winter on grey skies. I wouldn't wear this to see loved ones, unless they're 6ft under.

Rose and smoke. The rose is fresh and light on a bed of smoke (birch and agarwood). Freshness on the top from litchi. There is a liveliness, lightness about it making it wearable even in warmer weather. Very naturalistic, easy on the nose, calming, easy to be in, comfort to wear. Very lovely indeed if you like these notes. I am really enjoying wearing this even on this beautiful early summer day. EDIT: I didn’t sing its praises enough. When I first got it, weather was cooler and the rough birch and smoke dominated the composition. But now, early summer, I got totally addicted to this scent. Wore it three days in a row (unheard of!! ) and to bed. It improves in warmer weather. Addictive. So wonderful. A private secret. A scent that makes me feel like the star of my own film.

The dry down reminds me a lot of La colle noire by Christian Dior which I also enjoy. I can see these two being a power couple fragrance, they complement each other very nicely.
I love La fumee Alexandrie but not sure I need both in my collection.

Based on a carded sample. M&H's Rose Silence is soft, beautiful, with good performance. LFA is rose with an almost burning intensity, might well have been called Rose Violence. Too much for me I'm afraid.
2.5/5

The masculine rose

So many brands trying to market the next big thing as "a masculine rose" this and that.. in my very personal and humble opinion this has already been done in the past and this fragrance is one of very few of them. The first time I smelled it, so many years ago, I had a medicinal feel from it and despite having acquired it only recently it has been growing on me secretly over these years. I happened that not so long ago I tried it again in the store and I was baffled by how good was the aroma I was getting: fresh leather, still a little of that medicinal undertone and very light smoke, then it popped into my mind so clearly: this openness, this breeze is coming from a rose accord! Of course I should have noticed it earlier but back in the day I knew rose was there and it just blended in like in many woody orientals, let's call them this way. Too bad on my skin the rose shines too much, and therefore I wish to test the "flankers" (arabie, maroc etc..) to see if they lean even more into that perfect middle ground this is already very close to.

first 5 to 10 minutes I only get what I think is ISO E super - that stuff of Molecule perfumes - and on the first try I was in shock - at this price (blind buy)
but luckily it turns quickly to a very lush floral woody scent
and now, after 5 or so tries I really like it - al lot

A complex, passionate, warm rose, as if a flower could be smeared on wood. It begins sexy and ends chaste, which is a convenient quality.

Lovely soft but dense wood and rose. I had some on my skin and thought I might buy a bottle but after 2 hours there was just stark Iso E Super left on my skin, if it faded to nothing I wouldn't have minded.

A ubiquitous rose, creamy and close to how the Bulgarian variety smells with a fun smoky effect in the opening. Sadly smoke goes away in about 20 min leaving you with a generic rose water scent on some duty-free-shop-floor-ambiance-sweetish musks. There are hundreds of perfumes in the market with almost identical character but prices vary.

There is at once something wonderfully striking to the fulsome bitter and altered-leather-oud opening of La Fumée Alexandrie that emboldens the senses rather like the arrival Timothy Spall’s character, Eric Lyle, in Bertolucci’s last great epic film, the Sheltering Sky’ (1990).

Larger than life: deeply flawed and injured like a morally incontinent yet friendly and ‘harmless’ drunk, this is an initially grubby, boozy, insalubrious perfume dressed in a lived-in, almost ruined, linen shirt and grim trousers, reeking of old smoke, the musty residues of sweat induced by the prevailing heat of Tangiers, and spilled sherry indelicately staining and besmirching the former glory of the expensive cloth from which the apparel was fashioned: its forthright yet obsequious nature keen to impress with sincerity before the reprimands from ‘mother’ arrive in the form of scorching slabs of disapprobation and disgust.

Notably, La Fumée Alexandrie has a refreshingly ‘dirtier’ and harsher initial opening compared to the more sweet and succulent charms offered by its siblings from this intelligent range from Miller Harris. However, poised ignobly on the cusp of utter olfactory decay, being littered with copious sprays of tom-cat feral cumin, after a while it is as if the entire composition is ordered to clean itself up and obligingly assumes a suitably more polite character, shifting emphasis, and appears as if dressed for dinner in suit and bow tie: the result, a clearer veil of translucent aromatic oud not dissimilar (though superior) to Heeley’s Agarwoud, together with slightly mixed-in traces of ‘mother’s’ classical European rose-based perfume as if she with authority had overseen the transformation with stern deliverance in order to expunge sin.

Indeed, Lyn Harris’s creation promises to expand and split like and overripe piece of old fruit on a bed of cheesy oud not unlike a template Aoud from Montale, gone-wrong, and outside of its La Fumée Collection family, sits closely with Zegna’s gloriously smooth ‘Indonesian Oud’ though is far coarser and S.T. Dupont's brazen and muskier, Oud Oriental' and, over time, achieves the enchanting weight of TF’s Noir de Noir as if its implied superficial bulk is intriguingly internally inflicted with a density lowering molecular osteoporosis of sorts.

Fascinating, somehow easy to wear, and hugely long lasting, this is a most welcome if not an entirely original creation from Lyn Harris, appearing in some ways as if she had been asked to step-in for a one-off commission at Ormonde Jayne whilst Geza Schoen absconded and sequestered to deliver a contemporary oud although for this writer, alas, adhered to a degree of crowd-pleasing caution rather than let the composition descend in to a pit of ordure full of wanton decay and fetid disharmony: the latter I hope one day to smell, in-perfume, from this constantly exciting and hugely talented nose. 7.5 - 10