When you can sample hundreds of the world’s best fragrances in a single store, most perfumes – even brilliant, legendary creations – end up falling by the wayside. Every visit to the store can become its own journey toward the holy grail, a search for the literal ‘best of the best.’ But there’s usually a sign that signals the end of the journey. For me, that sign is laughter. When a perfume is so surprising and delightful that I can’t contain my happiness at discovery, I know I’ve likely found the newest fragrance in my collection.
Amouage’s Sunshine Woman triggered such a reaction earlier this summer. It’s a joyful composition, loaded with sweet florals and counterbalanced with elegant herbs; its lack of subtlety is part of the charm. It’s a touch poetic that the latest perfume to make me laugh is a dark as Sunshine is bright. Fzotic’s Ummagumma is joyful in the opposite way: rich, nuanced, and utterly intoxicating. Like all great perfumes, it’s the sort of fragrance whose precisely-constructed personality will enchant some noses and baffle others.
Ummagumma notes:
Saffron, carnation, chocolate, tobacco, leather, labdanum, sandalwood, cedar, frankincense, tonka bean, vanilla
Ummagumma opens with a dual blast of delicious dark chocolate and rich saffron. It’s one of the few perfumes where the fragrance lives up to its ingredient list; if you’re excited about a note on the pyramid, you’ll find it among Ummagumma’s lush heart. Lovely tobacco notes add a smoky dimension to the chocolate while leather provides a tasteful animalic skank, but don’t fear. The chocolate’s foody deliciousness remains front and center even as more interesting aspects of the perfume’s personality flit around the edges.
The middle ground that Ummagumma strikes will delight noses who want a true dark chocolate perfume, something decadent and tasty without being candy sweet. It’s one of the tastiest fragrances that skirts around being a true gourmand. However, those looking for a challenge should look elsewhere; this is a perfume unlikely to shock anyone who smells it. Even if Ummagumma ends up being your favorite chocolate fragrance, it’s unlikely to be your strangest. That’s good news in regards to wearing this socially, where it could fit easily as a formal, date, or club fragrance. Just don’t come to Ummagumma looking for anything near as bizarre as, say, the psychedelic record that serves as its namesake.
At $125 for 30mL, Ummagumma is priced very, very fairly – you’d be hard-pressed to find anything in its genre that’s substantially better. If you couldn’t tell from Kori’s Lampblack review, we’re fans of Fzotic, and Bruno Fazzolari’s compositions tend to be lovely across the board. If you love chocolate but think it can’t be translated to perfume, Ummagumma will certainly make you think again. And most likely, it’ll have you thinking of pulling it into your collection.
You can buy a sample or a bottle from the Fzotic website here.
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The Fandomentals “Fragdomentals” team base our reviews off of fragrances that we have personally, independently sourced. Any reviews based off of house-provided materials will be explicitly stated.
