HEADSPACE
CEDRE
2024
PERFUMER
Julien Rasquinet
CEDARWOOD
FLAME HEADSPACE
NUTMEG
CUMIN
VANILLA
AMBROX
TOBACAROL
‘To coincide with the 2024 celebrations in paris, headspace is launching cèdre. A meeting between a favourite perfume wood, rarely used in solinote, and a headspace flame, to illustrate the illumination of paris, the city of light. The flame, finally arrived from mount olympus for the celebrations, strikes the wood of the match like a forgotten book, miraculously unearthed in a bookshop. We stroll up the course of the seine, “A river framed by two rows of books” as cendrars wrote, carrying with us the scent of paper and the smell of words. As the streetlights come on and night falls on the city of light, wisps of wood deposit their fumaroles in the bottle. A flight of dry woods swirls through the air, enlivened by the shimmer of nutmeg and cumin, before meeting a headspace of flame in a crackling amber and vanilla scent. A modern, unadorned woody fragrance featuring two varieties of cedar: ‘atlas’ for its resinous, leathery notes, and ‘virginia’ for its dry, spicy notes reminiscent of pencil.’ – Headspace
Headspace has been one of my favorite emerging brands, with Santal as a stand-out from the ones that I’d reviewed prior to this. The brand sent over a discovery set of the Extraits & samples of later additions Cedre & Rose to try as well.
A nice woody scent here, but a bit more safe and sweet than I would love to see. I don’t really get the vibe of a flame or struck match, as per the brand’s concept. Nor does the cumin included in the notes should be of worry to you if you tend to avoid cumin. To be fair, I found Cedre to wear very light as well, so perhaps the different facets and details have escaped me.
If anything, this is a sweeter, smoother take on the usual cleaner, almost watery cedar takes we often see in perfumery. Kind of a middleground between common cedarwood and sandalwood archetypes, with a strong vanillic backbone and very mild spices.
Definitely a pleasant, inoffensive, cozy wear, but not one that feels particularly noteworthy to me. And not one that I would prefer of Santal for a woody Headspace for example.
