A hedonistic perfume that captures those moments for which there are no words. A single exuberant, never-ending party. Night after night of lavish dinners, followed by dancing merengue under the midnight sky until dawn. The scent of flowers and smoke hang in the air, mingling with spices with every breath. This is Café Tabac.
Before the latest perfume from Aedes de Venustas took shape, its name was already decided: Café Tabac. It is inextricably linked to the legendary 90s bar in the East Village where Robert Gerstner and Karl Bradl, the founders of Aedes de Venustas, spent many a night. It was that magical place where Kate Moss once met Johnny Depp, where Madonna was completely unpretentious when the going got tough, answering the phone or playing cloakroom attendant, and where Leo di Caprio befriended one or two supermodels. It was the place where the truly glamorous could be themselves, uninhibited, among themselves and immune to every snapshot. Because it was the pre-smartphone era, which feels so long ago that we long for it again.
‘It's the very special atmosphere that prevails in such trendy places that makes them legendary,’ says perfumer Bertrand Duchaufour. ’The deep blue smoke from cigarettes, cigars, weed... or whatever. It transports you to other kinds of paradise: laughter, longing, pure pleasure... again and again.’
This spirit also unfolded on a trip that Robert Gerstner and Bertrand Duchaufour took to the Dominican Republic last year for another fragrance project. ’We met lots of fashionable and lively people from Mexico, France, Rio and New York. It was an explosion of different cultures, conversations, ideas and views,‘ says Gerstner. “We drove from tropical jungle areas to the coast, and when we finally stood in a cigar factory, I said to Bertrand, ”Can you capture all these impressions in a bottle?’’
The result is as stunning, sexy and complex as the trip itself: the opening is fruity, as expected, with bergamot, which is surprisingly accompanied by notes of apple and tamarind. But overall, the perfume is a tribute to tobacco in all its facets. Dried tobacco leaves, tobacco flowers with their warm, moist aura, the lighting of a cigar – all these aspects are brought to life by herbaceous clary sage, davana and mugwort. A hint of mango, combined with nuances of dried fig and date, and the expressive smokiness of tobacco absolute, juniper and cedarwood join in. Extracts of rockrose, labdanum, amber elements, oak moss, vanilla, a cocoa accord and Peruvian balsam give the heart notes of the fragrance a rich, resinous fullness. No sugar-coated stuff here! Instead, wisps of a melange of roasted sugar, fresh clove and cardamom waft through the composition. They take away the heaviness of Café Tabac and instead give the perfume a character of multi-layered elegance. The fragrance concentration is 20 per cent, in keeping with old-school haute parfumerie. This standard requires the fragrance concentrate to undergo a months-long maturation process in France.
Aedes De Venustas Café Tabac is bottled in a precious flacon. A ribbed glass bottle decorated with peacock blue accents, a matte black cap bearing the insignia and a shiny yet powerful design mark the next chapter in the history of Aedes de Venustas.
