The desert exhales a specific and cruel sort of heat. It's very dry, which you'd expect. But it's full of debris that's invisible to the naked eye, and it sits in your throat, and your ears, and your eyes (nosebleeds are alarmingly common among new arrivals).
And the sheer temperature torches your human, in-built cooling system; sweat evaporates in seconds, and you're all the hotter for it. So as perfumer Francis Kurkdjian talks through his latest creation in a very well-air conditioned sanctum in the south Utah desert, onlookers feel literally and spiritually refreshed: it's a super hydrated version of its lionised Sauvage fragrance, and a scent that, according to Kurkdjian, packs “a soaring freshness.” Since 2015, there's been several different versions of Sauvage.
But this version, the Sauvage Eau Forte, is the first that Kurkdjian has solely remixed. And unlike its predecessors (and unlike most men's fragrances ), it's been formulated without a drop of alcohol. He passes some samples around the room and encourages an extended moment of silence, like a lecturer patiently waiting for a student to raise a nervous first hand.
The room fills with approving ‘mmmmmm’s. “The water base brings something that is impossible to re-create,” he says. “That lust effect.
It's a feeling, not a smell. It's wetness, but it's not watermelon notes or cucumber . This is smoother than the alcohol of the past Sauvages hit your nose.
” It's subtle. Which, in a world of men's fragra.