Louis Vuitton’s New Fragrance Made an Amber Convert Out of Me
The nose has an innate ability to take a scent and drum up a vivid picture in your mind, whether it’s taking you back to a trip to the beach when you were a tot or conjuring a trek through a tropical rainforest. Louis Vuitton intrinsically understands this olfactory power, and is especially good at experimenting with it in its Fragrances of the World collection. Case in point: the luxury house’s first scent release of the year is Ambre Levant, a fragrance inspired by the “mythical golden hour of the Middle East.” Any reference to the Middle East at this moment in time is… complicated. But setting aside the ongoing conflicts in the region, the Middle East has a long history of producing rich, intense, and highly-concentrated scents. Oud, an essential oil harvested from aquilaria trees native to Southeast Asia and North India, is sought after for its woody, sweet, and smoky aroma. Though there are hints of that in Ambre Levant, Louis Vuitton’s house perfumier, Jacques Cavallier-Belletrud has created a slightly more nuanced concoction …
