Jo's Scent Notes: Réserve en Afrique Aube Lumineuse

What I need right now in a fragrance is an absolute palate cleanse. After the heady spices, the opulence and the velvetiness of what I wore at Christmas – much as I revelled in my little wardrobe of sophisticated scents over the festive season – it’s as if my whole being is craving something that is the olfactory equivalent of throwing open the windows and blowing away the cobwebs.

Réserve en Afrique Aube Lumineuse is a bottled wake-up call for the senses. At first gust – it’s a positive gust! – I get an entire grove of orange blossom. (One of the brightest ingredients in perfumery, to me.) The opening of this almost crystalline scent is fresh, like a Cologne – but not nearly so evanescent, because after the citrusy notes of tangerine, orange blossom (and the zing of ginger) dissipate, this becomes altogether more woody and tethering underpinned by plenty of cedarwood.

For background, Réserve en Afrique – a fragrance house that I discovered on a visit to Brighton’s Soliflore fragrance boutique (read my report here) – is unusual in that it’s an African-based house. Founder Etienne Haddad’s grandfather immigrated to Senegal from the Levant, where his family worked on forest conservation projects. Etienne grew up surrounded by nature, its scents making a huge impression –and later, with his wife Valeria, decided to create a fragrance house to capture Africa’s sensory stories, celebrating both the landscape of the African continent, and its raw materials, from the Nigerian ginger which features in Aube Lumineuse through to Moroccan rose via Madagascan vanilla.

Poetically, if perhaps a little over-lyrically, their description for Aube Lumineuse invites us to imagine this scenario: ‘The sun rises, flooding the great expanses of the sweeping plains, gracing the wilderness with its wash of pure light. The dawn’s intense rays awaken these spectacular lands. Great herds rove majestically in the distance. Bright blue birds perch in the flat-topped acacia trees while giraffes stroll with leisurely grace. The sky is clear. The air is fresh.’

The fresh air and the clear skies I get, though I’m not sure this conjures giraffes and acacia trees. For me, Aube Lumineuse is a starched white shirt of a scent: pristine, clean, very wearable. (Something that would be perfect, actually, if you’re still going in ot an office.) And specifically because the freshness doesn’t stick around for long, I find myself spritzing and re-spritzing, for that all-important and very welcome mood lift, without fear of rocking the room or putting others on sensory overload.

It is the antidote to the darkness of January, offering the promise of longer days and spring’s green shoots with every mood-lifting spritz.

Cobwebs? What cobwebs?

Find Aube Lumineuse at Soliflore, 28 Gloucester Road, North Laines, Brighton BN1 4AQ

It is also online here, priced from £39 for 11ml