Tuberose & Wild Fig

Cochine built its name on candles before it moved into fine fragrance, and Tuberose & Wild Fig is the one that most obviously carries that heritage across. It opens bright and slightly bitter, with bergamot and lemon over galbanum, and it is the galbanum that sets the tone: sappy, green and a little sharp, the smell of a stem snapped rather than a flower in bloom. The heart is where the name earns itself. Wild fig arrives first, milky and leafy rather than jammy, and tuberose unfolds behind it with jasmine and cyclamen filling out the white floral edges. Because the fig and the galbanum keep pulling green, the tuberose never reaches the heavy, buttery weight it can have elsewhere; this is tuberose in a garden at dusk, not tuberose in a ballroom. The base is deliberately restrained, cedarwood and vetiver with musk smoothing the join, and it dries down dry and woody instead of sweet. Longevity is good for a 50ml eau de parfum in this bracket, with the woods holding on well into an evening. It suits late spring and summer best, and it is more of a warm-evening and weekend scent than an office one. The lane is small-batch British niche with a Vietnamese travel story, priced accordingly at around GBP 110 for 50ml.