As summer builds to a crescendo, why not hide in the undergrowth, seek out some shade, and enjoy the cooling, green tones of Green Spell.

Listed notes

Mandarin, black currant bud absolute, galbanum (oil and resinoid), violet leaf absolute, narcissus absolute, tomato leaf accord, fig leaf accord, vetiver, ambroxan, musk (synthetic).

Top notes

What could be better at the height of summer than to spritz yourself with liquid refreshment. Often that comes in the form of citrus scents, but green fragrances are having a resurgence at the moment so turning towards something more verdant than sparkling will provide the refreshment you seek along with putting you bang on trend.

Green Spell by Eris is one of the best green fragrances on the market. Antoine Lie, a skilful perfumer with a huge range, has formulated this composition with as much drive and dedication as their spicy smasher, Scorpio Rising, which we have previously reviewed.

Spray Green Spell on skin and you are immediately met with sharp, snappy and sappy green stems. It is breathtakingly realistic, like you have just shoved your head in a fresh bouquet of flowers, but instead of the flowers you’re sniffing the crunchy stems. The greenery that meets you has a sharp tang from the mandarin which feels bitter and astringent rather than flimsy and flighty. The composition has movement, and you can almost imagine yourself at molecular size being whooshed up tubes of xylem and phloem deep within an ancient plant.

Heart notes

There’s a mouth-puckering astringency to Green Spell which makes itself more evident as the composition really settles. The greenery in this fragrance just does not quit, and there is no letting up in the way that the stems grow and cluster to surround you. Wearing Green Spell really does make me feel like an imp or fairy, surrounded by stalks of grass and other vegetation, using a leaf for an umbrella, and wearing clothes spun out of spider silk and petals.

There is a shady, shadowness to Green Spell which calls to mind the deepest, lushest parts of the undergrowth. The parts which remain damp event at the end of the hottest days, the places where dew drops are first to form and persist longest, and where you can always find shade to hide in. The galbanum twists around the violet leaf which creeps over the tomato leaf to give this impression.

This feeling of blanketing, multifaceted greenery is intensified by a feeling of moisture which creeps into the scent. It feels thicker than “watery” so perhaps “sappy” is a better description. It doesn’t slow the fragrance down or make it become sluggish at all, but it does give an even more realistic evocation of lush vegetation. A very aromatic and uplifting thread of greenery then emerges – the fig leaf accord – which gives an element of light and space to the composition, balancing both the shade and the moisture out perfectly. It is this ability to play about with threads of essentially the same fragrance “colour” but still bringing movement and dimension to it which makes Antoine Lie such a tremendous force as a perfumer.

Base notes

One of my personal highlights from Green Spell is what the brand have done with in the base. Reading the blurb for Eris, we learn that they are a brand which takes inspiration from the vintage but which then update that for a modern audience. This is very well done in the last phase of Green Spell. Here, the frond-like, realistic greenery of the rest of the composition subtly and slowly shifts towards a more abstract type of greenery through the introduction of a musky, drier final section. The greenery still smells real and not forced or contrived, but there is a subtlety about the end which makes it skew more aromatic, more abstract and yet very wearable representations of greenery.

This optimistic leaning towards the future is a lovely way to end what is a very accomplished and interesting, multifaceted and nuanced green fragrance. It’s hard to say that something is the best of its type on the market, but Green Spell has to be up there in terms of both interest, sheer force of the green that it delivers, and the way in which it is very wearable and supremely relevant to both vintage lovers and more modern fragrance fanciers today.

The other stuff

The perfumer for Green Spell was Antoine Lie.

The projection of Green Spell was fairly polite, going to somewhere between hugging and handshake distance. This would be a very appropriate scent to wear to the office, to the gym, or for daytime dates without choking out anyone who gets near you.

The longevity of the fragrance is solid, lasting around six hours following application. It also seems to stand up to the heat fairly well, offering cool refreshing wafts throughout the day.

To my mind Green Spell is a spring and summer fragrance which would work best during the day as an approximate guide.

If you like Green Spell, you may also consider Fathom V by Beaufort (for more of the tomato leaf loveliness), Herman by Etat Libre d’Orange (shady greenery), Verdant by Eau de Boujee (classy sticks of celery) or Someone Else’s Flowers by Freddie Albrighton (for bitter savoury green).

The brand

Eris Parfums are based in America and the brand is the brainchild of Barbara Herman, a perfume lover and fragrance writer who teamed up with perfumer, Antoine Lie. The brand’s aim is to champion subversive beauty and to push olfactive boundaries with compositions which are bold, nodding to the vintage scents of the past so loved by Barbara Herman, but with their sights so firmly set on the future of fragrance as well.

The packaging and presentation of Eris fragrances is simple and monochromatic, ensuring that most of your money is going on the scent rather than on the bottle it comes in. The bottles are sleek and rectangular with simple black and white labels, and black caps.

Buy it

Green Spell is available from Eris Parfums, where it is priced at $150. You can also purchase it from Sainte Cellier where it’s £115.

We were very kindly gifted a sample of this fragrance by Eris Parfums and Sainte Cellier. Our thanks to them.

Header image by damesophie from Pixabay.