By Thomas
After the roaring success of Tea for Two, I felt the need to sample other L’Artisans, particularly the ones that others recommended to me – namely Voleur de Roses and Mechant Loup. I have to admit I was rather put off from Mechant Loup from Turin’s review (“more like Wet Dog”), but our tastes have differed on other scents (Platinum Egoiste, among others), and so eventually I gave this one a whirl.
Mechant Loup opens with an interesting and slightly off-putting blast of anise/hazelnut/honey. After a few minutes the hazelnut disappears, the honey fades, and the (salty) anise jumps to the front, joined now by molasses. Seriously, on me it is strongly reminiscent of salty/sweet licorice and molasses after around 30 minutes, which will likely turn off a few people, but you can’t please everyone. The balance is quite nice, eventually bringing to mind a certain biscotti-type cookie (speaking of which, perhaps it’s time I did up some more of those).
After a while, the anise/molasses makes way for sandalwood and cedar which balance the anise rather nicely. This continues on for a while, until it finally occurs to me that there’s a raspy-resinous edge to it: Myrrh! How did I miss this? It belongs here, that’s why. In the end it takes a resinous woody/spicy tack and continues for a good long time.
Don’t mistake Mechant Loup for a suave date-night or board-meeting scent: there are too many other more appropriate choices for that purpose. This is the kind of scent you reach for, just because it’s how you want to smell that day. It’s got a rough yet comfortable wool/flannel feel to it, so I’d choose this for fall/winter and box it up after Easter.
Year: 1997
Perfumer: Bertrand Duchaufour
Notes: Hazelnut, Honey, Sandalwood, Cedar, Licorice, Myrrh
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