Love at first sight, at first touch, at first breath. Delightful elegant box, blotters with beautiful pictures, sealed into an envelope - top-level aesthetics.
Three fragrances, three olfactive stories about beauty and sensuality.
MOTHER X LOVE - Romantic, delicate; like a swan fluff that envelops the skin with a warm cloud. Juicy ginger, sweet vanilla - and a pod, and a flower, fluffy musk - it is impossible to breathe. With each breath you want to feel the aroma longer and longer.
NANYANG - A spectacular ode to green tea; the most extraordinary tea I've ever met in the perfume market. Leather, saffron, and green tea - unusual and very, very beautiful. Like a slice of suedge, soaked with a tightly brewed green tea and sprinkled with a pinch of saffron. Antidepressant aroma, replaces rain with the sun, grayness with bright colours, darkness with light.
LOST LOVERS - Extravagant rose union with sandalwood and vetiver. Rose - garden, fragrant, washed with dew. Vetiver - a little smoky, calm and quiet. Sandalwood is stunningly thick, sensual and very, very beautiful. Sweet life full of happiness.
Sincerely fascinated by the collection.
— Oksana Nomirovskaya
Moscow
MOTHER X LOVE opens on the skin as an ethereal cloud of aromatic freshness. A delicate touch of ginger maintains its effervescent qualities as it's joined by a melange of soft white florals on a base of vanilla and white musks. As the fragrance evolves on the skin, the musk rises to the surface where they remain until the end, evoking images of cashmere.
The overall feeling conveyed by the fragrance is airy, elegant and comforting. The beauty of MOTHER X LOVE is its polished simplicity that lets the quality of the raw materials shine. It is a fragrance that I have found myself reaching for more and more lately in recent times of stress. It is completely unisex and perfectly versatile.
Performance on this fragrance is fantastic too. I get all day longevity and a moderate sillage, dropping closer to the skin around the 3 hour mark.
— Nathan Martin
Sydney
It is in the small, normally unseen details of design that I love when it comes to most things in life. Perfume is no exception to this.
There are elements to Maison de L'Asie's bottle design and packaging that you may miss if you're not looking for them. You will see the care, the attention and the stories Elizabeth Liau, the founder of Maison de L'Asie is trying to show.
This is the first chapter which represents nostalgia and memories of Singapore.
With vivid aromatic tones of vetiver, Lost Lovers opens with lush green notes, evoking images of young plants unfurling in a forest, but with time, this complex fragrance becomes richer and warmer, pairing the smoothness of sandalwood and amber with the smoky, sensual elements of vetiver.
— Lance Martire
UK
Nanyang is lovely. The brand aims to create French perfumes with Asian overtures and I can totally get that. The quality of the perfumes is very evident and all three (of Chapter 1) smell lovely.
I have had quite a few sprays over the last week or so and it totally captures the spirit of French perfume with an exotic Asian back story.
The listed notes are simply Green Tea, Saffron and Leather which sets a foundation but doesn't really give the whole story, that's down to you to discover I guess.
It's a mildly sweet and slightly familiar smell in the opening, delightful and gives the impression of a delicate perfume which it isn't. Nanyang is actually quite potent with excellent longevity, good projection and a lovely sillage.
I get some lovely florals with slight water nuances enhanced by a mystery citrus vibe which reacts with the tea to make it quite refreshing. As the perfume develops, a kind of suede like feel brings some texture to the perfume which is very welcomed and works exceptionally well. It also gives Nanyang a base which supports the perfume perfectly.
Excellent perfume.
— Matt Keen
UK
If you are one who likes vanilla perfumes that do not dip too far into sweetness, Bali Ha'i is one of them to recommend to you.. Bali Ha'i is a shape-shifter of a fragrance, moving much like the breezes that surround islands, where the winds can shift quickly. Yet among these breezes are subtle variations from the main themes.
Some traditional island notes are evident, such as an understated and elegant coconut, some soft aquatic nuances, and pale white musk. A bit deeper in, a humming, warm patchouli lends depth and gives homage to the sea below the land.
Tobacco is used as an anchor and it's a perfect accompaniment to the complex and balsamic textures of the vanilla accord that was introduced earlier. It adds even more depth to the patchouli and musk, but has a character all its own — dark and ambery, with a tannic edge and flecks of golden-hues glowing through. The impression is a mildly sweet, brown sugar pipe tobacco just hovering above cool patchouli leaves and the piquant citrus of pink rose. It's delightfully atmospheric, hazy, just gently floral-and-vanilla enough to tantalize but also leave you feeling perfectly balanced. Although the name Bali H'ai often refers to that which lies just out of our reach — the island of dreams — this evokes the dream directly around you on your skin, and brings it that much closer.
— John Biebel
Editor at Fragrantica
A first (and lasting) impression of Bois D'Indonésie is its inclusion of oud, and it is brought into the perfume in the cleverest of ways. Oud can take on so many qualities, based on where it is from, how it is processed, in what state the original agarwood was found, etc. Some ouds have a distinctly airy, almost menthol-like minty-ness; its something lovely to behold, and it's this kind of oud you'll find here. It has a sharp, spearmint freshness immediately followed by a deep woodiness (with a whole myriad of notes tucked inside: coffee, saffron, cinnamon, cedar). Tantalizingly, this oud is kept in a perfect place: something to notice, and something discrete.
But being discrete does not mean that it's not tenacious. Minty oud, paired with pale pear and a bright, luminous but bell-ringing sharp lotus makes an unmistakable profile. Whereas some oud perfumes reach right into smoke or the dank soil, this sings with simultaneous glisten and smolder. The brand describes Bois D'Indonésie as "an elegant wood fragrance that pays tribute to Indonesia's exquisite temples... inspired by the intricate carvings, expressed through the mellow richness of incense and agarwood." It's an accurate reflection of these temples, which are both monumental, but full of the breezes and airiness of caverns. It is reminiscent of Japanese incense, which is far more cooling than the warmer incense of the west. Bamboo, that note that is both present and under the surface, is quietly damp and sappy with just discernible saline and green sweetness, suggesting the ever-present ocean that lies so close to each of the islands.
Bois D'Indonésie gives us that experience of viewing forward and back, and our reverie is the pleasant sensation of being trapped between these two times, the smells associated with this entrapment, and being completely at ease with this state of sublime uncertainty.
— John Biebel
Editor at Fragrantica
Les Nuits de Bali, the most vociferous of the perfumes from Chapter 2, producing a thick, sweet, luxurious fragrance at a steady cadence and volume. Its component parts are all attention-seekers (earthy patchouli, spicy saffron, rich and woody oud, deep and sweet vanilla, concentrated sandalwood, and a dark red rose.) In this grouping, they are much more like an elixir or attar and could easily operate as a heady perfume oil that radiates slowly, penetratingly from the skin.
Much like the pull of Christian Dior's oud perfumes like Oud Rosewood, we find yet another face of this very complex smell, its very sweet and almost fruity side. Rose and saffron combine in a thick, humid, semi-opaque magenta that moves from the intensity of a profound oud accord to a more soothing but dense sandalwood. The intermingling of patchouli and vanilla with these sweeter notes gives an impression of a liqueur or a sweet plum wine; a nice added sensation that is most evident at the beginning of the wearing experience. Because Les Nuits de Bali is so powerful, this easily lasts well into the evening on skin, and wears its life slowly, revealing the darker side of the base sandalwood and vanilla for many hours.
Appropriately so, Les Nuits de Bali grows less sweet over the night, but increases in depth, and so its mystery multiplies. This is another unusual metamorphosis for a fragrance, where our usual expectation is to find that our fragrances simplify or grow more linear. It's the opposite here, as bits of spice and flowers grow fainter, woods and resins steam against skin, and the reflections of a moon against the sea act as a concentrated source of heat in a restless, balmy night.
— John Biebel
Editor at Fragrantica
This fragrance has such an unusual profile (I've really not smelled anything like it before,) that I was chasing ideas in my mind about what I thought I was smelling. It has the olfactive quality of when we catch ourselves daydreaming and small flashes of memory momentarily take us away to sometime in our past, and we awaken again in the moment.
Through some very curious perfume trickery, the base notes of suede and musk come to the center rather quickly and form a kind of softly milky floral musk. This envelops you quickly, with very warm hands. I can understand that the narrative metaphor at play is the protective love of a mother, but the sensation really does occur within the perfume as well. Some perfumes make us bold, and others draw us in and rock us back and forth - clearly, we've succumbed to the second case and we're almost ready to fall into a very peaceful slumber.
Mother x Love became my favorite of the three perfumes, and I may never know exactly why. Again, I blame the spirits that seem to swirl around these perfumes. The very moment it emerged from the blotter, a glorious note of litchi pealed forth and so much else opens along with it - a wet and tangy ginger, an ethereal vanilla (much more like the dry and airy Tahitian variety), and gentle, sweeter magnolia blossoms.undergoes fascinating changes on the skin as it's worn - it evolves from something bright and citrus-filled to milky and heliotrope-powdery, and then finally to a soapy jasmine with sweet and gentle musk at the very end. Jasmine makes its presence known very late in the perfume, but its timing is perfect - it shows up just when it should, softly, persistently, with the faintest touch of suede. The closing of Mother x Love darkens just enough to become a bit more serious and thoughtful near the end, but it retains its fresh litchi-and-magnolia elements to the last moments.
— John Biebel
Editor at Fragrantica
The final perfume of Chapter 1 within the Maison de L'Asie line is Lost Lovers. By looking at its note breakdown, you would not think to link it to the gourmand family, and yet it squarely falls there, dominated by a full and sweet amber-orange flower center. This is counteracted by a note of dry vetiver which, mixed together, makes a yin and yang balance of elements. Other notes seem to fall on each side of this as well - the violet is milky and sweet, as are the jasmine and musk, while a spice accord, rose blossoms, and bergamot are distinctly sharp and full of zest. There is so much at work within this perfume that one could take many detours with the nose: alkaline iris-violet, velvety white musk, dry and vanilla-infused vetiver.
The balance is met well, and held delicately - just enough of a grasp, but never a rough fist trying to control an overflow of emotions. On the skin, Lost Lovers hits a high note just as the center is reached and a bit of cedar becomes more apparent. Nearly every note is detectable at this time, and it turns darkly woody, then floral, then brightly citrusy. I'm compelled to compare this to a "love affair" but after smelling this awhile, I think the story arc is far longer - like a person who is in your life for a long, long time, and you experience so many of their moods alongside yours. This sensation is analogous to the bouquet of smells within Lost Lovers. On the surface, it is a spice-amber perfume that many would find appealing, but just dip beneath that and subtle shifts reveal complex interconnections which make our attachment all the more enmeshed. It's a profound complexity.
— John Biebel
Editor at Fragrantica
