Ah, the satisfaction of seeing the scented stars align. As soon as I sprayed Jacques Cavallier’s new Imagination for Louis Vuitton, some long-buried memory began to stir. Bracing, zesty aldehydes. A serene tea note, supported by cardamom and ginger. And in the base, a massive – but not excessive – dose of ambery musks, heavy with the sea-spray tang of Ambroxan. I was convinced I’d gone through a long phase, years ago, of wearing something similar. Moments later, it came to me: a vision of a sleek bottle bearing the words Bulgari Pour Homme, followed by a vague inkling that there was more to the similarity than just the smell of the two perfumes. Sure enough, a quick search revealed that the Bulgari, released in 1995, was also composed by Cavallier and that its official list of notes cites aldehydes, tea and amber. A geek-tastic moment, if ever there was one.
Thankfully, Imagination is no clone of Cavallier’s earlier work, and I mean this not to be disparaging about the Bulgari – which I always enjoyed – but to make the point that the perfumer hasn’t merely dug up a formula from his dusty notebooks. As others have done before, he shows us with this release that scent-creation is a cumulative art, with new ideas building upon earlier ones, pulling them in novel directions, giving them surprising twists, presenting them in subtly, but markedly, different ways.
In Imagination, Cavallier has revisited his 90s composition and has made the top more sparkling – shades of Dior’s superb and much-missed Escale A Pondicherry – while cleaning up the base. Some will no doubt complain that an overdose of Ambroxan is a somewhat lazy way to grant a fragrance diffusiveness and assertiveness, and there may be some truth in that. But overdoses are justified if they function well within the whole. And it is as a whole that Imagination works, presenting immaculate lines and relaxed nonchalance without ever seeming to try too hard. That said, the perfume nerd in me would have loved it if the brand had given it a slightly different name — Re-Imagination.
Persolaise
[Louis Vuitton Imagination review based on a sample provided by the brand in 2021.]
—
If you’ve enjoyed this post, please consider supporting my work
by ‘buying me a coffee’ using the panel below.
Thanks very much indeed.
—
Discover more from
Subscribe to get the latest posts to your email.