Solo Vulcan Eau de Parfum

Four materials are all that Loewe Solo Vulcan Eau de Parfum is built from, and the interest lies in how little the house needed in order to make something distinctive.

Thyme is the signal material. It is dry, resinous and slightly medicinal, the smell of the herb crushed between the fingers rather than cooked, and very few fragrances are willing to let it take the lead. Lavender sits alongside it, herbal rather than laundered, adding a cool greyish calm that keeps the thyme from feeling abrasive. Orange blossom is the only sweetness in the composition, and it is a clean and slightly bitter one, white flower rather than fruit. Vetiver finishes everything off with dry roots and a faint smokiness, pulling the herbs down into the earth where they belong. That is the entire structure. It is a short composition and it wears as one: no development to speak of, the same shape at four hours as at ten minutes, just quieter.

At eau de parfum strength those four materials last longer than you would expect, six or seven hours, keeping within arm's reach once the first one has passed. It is best in spring and autumn, during the day, on anybody who likes an aromatic herbal scent and dislikes sweetness. It reads masculine, and it is an unusually austere thing to find in a mainstream designer range, which is most of its appeal. Loewe is a Madrid house founded in 1846, originally a leather goods workshop rather than a perfume house. It took its German surname in 1872 under Enrique Loewe Roessberg, who bought the original workshop, entered perfume in 1972 with L de Loewe, and now runs its fragrance work under LVMH.