A tender and delicate scent which communicates in feathery touches.

Listed notes

White tea, iris powder, incense, vanilla, itauba wood.

Top notes

Self care. It’s become one of those buzz words over the last few years, but with increasingly shocking and upsetting events afflicting our lives and those of people all around the world, from pandemics to wars to economic recessions, corruption, greed and harm, self care becomes more and more vital to stay sane in troubling times.

Scented self care is something which many fragrance enthusiasts will already be intimately acquainted with, and with Intime.Extime – a new release from Pierre Guillaume – we get a fragrance which adds another string to that self-care bow.

Intime.Extime is a relaxed and delicate scent right from the start. This is immediately apparent once it lands on skin and a beautiful plume of sweet, powderiness rises. This scent is like wearing feathers. It’s light, downy, a little gauzy and transparent but has a quiet, understated power about it too. It’ll keep you warm and snuggly when you need wrapping up in a feather duvet and taking care of!

The start of Intime.Extime is gentle and airy, but it also has touches of vanilla ice cream about it, milky and cool, and bringing us further soothing and nostalgic memories. You can practically feel it easing a childhood sore throat as you take those initial sniffs.

Heart notes

There are both creamy and powdery elements within Intime.Extime and yet their opposing viewpoints feel pleasingly harmonious – like one is a natural extension of the other somehow. As the fragrance fully emerges, whispers of incense (and they are indeed only whispers) flit across the scent, but they add a more fulsome sense of support to the lighter aspects of the composition.

The white tea side of Intime.Extime is a lovely inclusion. It isn’t too punchy in the mix, but it forms a fragrant bridge between the incense and the vanilla, and it ties the vanilla down to stop it being too airy and floating away to saccharine-sweet-land. The tea takes the sweet edge off, it gives the whole scent a greater sense of sophistication and it unites with the incense in feeling like they support the whole confection. Quite beautifully detailed for a fragrance which – upon first sniff – feels deceptively simple.

The iris gradually strolls into this snowstorm of feathery notes, bringing with it a greater sense of dry powderiness which gradually takes over from the creamily, milky aspect we noticed at first. That milkiness is still there but rather than being to the fore it now hums away in the background minding its own business as this dry, almost snowy iris takes centre stage.

The iris is friendly, a touch cooler but not as far as icy, and it feels like it both dances and sparkles across the composition whilst adding another facet to keep it grounded. If it isn’t too unflattering a comparison to make, the iris feels like dust motes dancing in a ray of sunshine – airbourne for now, but destined to settle quietly somewhere. Make no mistake though, this isn’t a dirty or dusty smelling composition, just that it has that sense of languid, relaxed romance about it.

Base notes

I wouldn’t say that Intime.Extime will give you an education in what itauba wood smells like, but the fragrance does become slightly woodier in the base. This isn’t stodgy or heavy wood, it’s blonde and fresh, reminding us perhaps of sawdust or chippings, again with that light, airiness suffused throughout. The powderiness of the composition, coupled with the fresh woody aspect give it a gentle sense of cleanliness – almost like the fragrance equivalent of climbing into fresh cotton sheets that have been line-dried. Intime.Extime doesn’t smell like fresh cotton sheets per se, but it gives that sort of cosy, clean feeling when worn.

The star players of Intime.Extime have to be the vanilla and powdery iris. They take up the majority of the composition and are with us and visible through to the end. The fragrance has sparkle, but it isn’t a gaudy, showy sort of sparkle, it’s instead a sort of inherent glimmer, a pearlescent shine, which is really lovely to wear – especially on days when you may feel as if you need ways to top up your own shine!

Intime.Extime is a relaxed and effortless scent which is very easy to wear. It’s a jeans-and-a-tshirt-but-looking-sexy-anyway type of scent, a holiday type of scent, and a scent which – if you find you enjoy it – will give you a fragrant way to take care of yourself without a whole lot of rigmarole. There’s a distinct sense of tenderness here which is beautiful and feels authentic, like you’re looking after someone you love. It feels like the perfumer went inwards in formulating this composition and gave us a bit of himself in doing so. Perhaps that is the diary referenced in the brand’s marketing blurb for this scent, or perhaps it’s my own thoughts projecting onto the fragrance, either way though Intime.Extime feels personal, intimate, and really rather lovely.

The other stuff

The perfumer for Intime.Extime is Pierre Guillaume and the fragrance was released in 2022.

Given that this is a gentle and relaxed fragrance, you might expect the longevity to be less good than it actually is, but Intime.Extime is not afraid to stick around and offers very respectable levels of longevity – around six to eight hours or so if not more. The projection of the scent is polite but not too demure, going to around handshake distance, or perhaps a little less. It seems nigh on impossible to overspray the fragrance too.

I can imagine wearing Intime.Extime most on chilled out days when I am curled up on the sofa or pottering about in a relaxed, comfortable outfit or sat reading a book. It’s a calm and soothing companion.

The brand

If you’ve visited us at all previously then you will know that Pierre Guillaume are one of our firm favourites here at The Sniff and we have reviewed a vast array of his fragrances which combine interesting, modern compositions with a wide range and ease of accessibility. These aren’t the esoteric end of the spectrum, but instead are wearable scents which fit into your daily life with ease, whilst giving you that slice of luxury and uniqueness you may have come to fragrance to find.

We’ve previously reviewed A Une Madone, Alphaora, Morning in Tipasa, Animal Mondain, Lune d’Eau, Sunsuality, PG 9.1 Komorebi, PG 03 Cuir Venenum, PG 04 Musc Maori, PG 5.1 Suede Osmanthe, PG 16 Jardins de Kerylos and the exceptional Bois Naufrage. Also by Pierre Guillaume we’ve looked at Superlady, Sucre d’Ebene, Shermine, Aqaysos, Jangala, Tonkamande, Anti-Blues and Hapyang.

Buy it

Intime.Extime is available from the Pierre Guillaume web boutique, where it is priced at €105 for 50ml of EdP or €155 for 100ml.

You can also buy Intime.Extime from Bloom Perfumery London, where it is priced at £95 for the 50ml bottle and £138 for the 100ml.

We were very kindly gifted a no-strings attached bottle of this fragrance by Pierre Guillaume, and we thank him kindly for his support.

Header image by birgl from Pixabay. Images of the product by The Sniff.