Python by Trussardi

It is a perfume that passes without making a splash (like so many other Trussardi scents), yet it is bloody hell, it smells so intoxicatingly potent you feel as though you are floating on a cloud. In a word: narcotic. A boozy, sexy opening in the style of so many oriental nineties fragrances, but the finish hits you with a vengeance because, without warning, it transforms into a delicious, intoxicating poultice—a delightful blend of balsamic, hot, spicy, and warm notes, as if you had mixed Organza, Samsara, Nu, and Lancôme’s Aroma Calm in a single pot. Python truly smells like a snake; in this case, an early 2000s serpent that is ambiguous and hypersexual. There is a dark chocolate here that lacks the childish sweetness of artificial chocolate flavoured with butter and additives, nor the dusty, ancient tone of natural cocoa. This chocolate is dense and full-bodied, devoid of sweetness, tasting instead of coloured crayon waxes with an almost animalistic, hallucinatory sediment that is leaden and astringent. The combination of cardamom, chocolate, and sandalwood turns this Python into something diabolical yet serene. Add a pinch of nutmeg with its spicy sweetness to those cold notes, and you will faint from the pleasure 🙂 This is how Emmanuelle Seigner in The Ninth Gate would smell: androgynous and dangerous, atavistic and diabolical, unable to repress her sexual impulses but possessing that arrogance and pride in the gaze of those who know they are not just another face in the crowd… I like to think it would have been the perfect perfume had someone in the early 2000s decided to launch a unisex flanker for Poison. Now discontinued and expensive, and likely produced in small quantities as there are not many bottles around, if you come across it, it is a true black swan that knows no god in the pursuit of others with more fame. One of the best things Trussardi has ever released, alongside Donna.