Abyssae L’Extrait: How Do You Burn Incense Underwater?

Abyssae L’Extrait has me considering a €320 solution to a problem I’ve been perfectly capable of ignoring. It’s been a while since I had a bottle from L’Artisan Parfumeur in my collection, and I think it’s time to remedy that. Of all the fragrances that could have prompted this reunion, I’m slightly surprised it’s the one that asks me to imagine incense burning at the bottom of the sea.

Daphné Bugey returns to her 2022 Abyssae with an Extrait de Parfum for La Botanique. The original put eucalyptus and rose together over Cashmeran. This time, Bugey brings incense into the foreground, gives the rose a more balsamic character and builds a darker foundation around it. I’m working from the published notes for this first look. A skin test is still ahead, but there’s already a question worth taking to the counter. What happens to that cool, peculiar rose when you surround it with smoke and resin?

The original Abyssae was already an unusual marine perfume

The original won a niche fragrance award from the Fragrance Foundation France in 2023. The number 33, which appears on both bottles, refers to the trials Bugey went through to finish that first composition. I like that bit of workshop history sitting there on the label. The campaign can tell me about the mysteries of the ocean. The number tells me somebody spent a great deal of time getting the eucalyptus and rose to agree.

Of the three notes the house highlights in the Eau de Parfum, eucalyptus globulus is the one I find most revealing. If you were asked to suggest the cold of deep water, a leaf with a sharp, almost medicinal association would be a curious place to start. Put Damask rose next to it and you have a flower in an unfamiliar climate. Cashmeran brings the idea back towards something soft and woody, giving the coolness somewhere to go. It’s easy to see why Bugey kept the eucalyptus and the rose. The two materials already give her a way to make the sea feel stranger than a gust of air on a beach.

What Daphné Bugey changes in Abyssae L’Extrait

For Abyssae L’Extrait, the house puts eucalyptus resin, incense and ambergris on the shortlist of key notes. Bugey’s own description fills in the space between them. She talks about a more balsamic rose and a base in which sandalwood and cypriol contribute to the woody, resinous character. The rose is still part of the composition even though it has ceded its place among the three headline notes.

That shift in emphasis is what interests me. Eucalyptus is doing double duty on paper. It carries a connection to the original and, in its resinous guise, sits alongside incense, another material with a markedly different association with freshness. I’m curious whether the incense picks up that aromatic edge or whether the two remain distinct enough to create a sensation of cold and warmth at once. I’m equally interested in the rose halfway through a wear. If it keeps enough definition to register against the woods, the perfume could feel quite different from an incense composition with a floral accent.

The ambergris is the easiest note to connect to the ocean setting. The sandalwood and cypriol are more intriguing to me because they suggest different textures within the base. There’s room in that pairing for something smooth and something earthier to coexist. How much space they leave around the rose is one of the things I’d want to smell for myself.

La Botanique goes below the waterline

There’s a precedent for this kind of darkness in La Botanique. In Tenebrae, Bugey uses incense, resin and cedarwood to imagine a forest. Here, incense and resin belong to a submerged landscape. The change of setting makes the eucalyptus, rose and ambergris particularly interesting. They’re the materials I’d look to for clues about how she intends to take those familiar smoky textures somewhere else.

The packaging does a lovely job of suggesting where. La Botanique’s visual world was developed with botanical illustrator Katie Scott, and the Abyssae L’Extrait box looks like a natural-history plate from an expedition that got a little out of hand. Those blue tubular forms could be specimens brought back from the seabed. In the campaign, the silver fish and the bubbles around the bottle give the scene the air of an object suspended in water. I’m more drawn to that odd little ecosystem than I would be to another photograph of a wave crashing over a bottle.

€320 for 75 ml. What would make me choose the Extrait?

L’Artisan Parfumeur lists Abyssae L’Extrait at €320 for 75 ml on its European shop. The original Eau de Parfum is €250 for the same volume, so the premium is €70, or 28%. The Extrait designation tells me how the house presents the release. The published notes give me a better idea of what I’d be paying to explore. I’ve written separately about what designations like EDP and extrait can tell us in my guide to perfume concentrations.

I’d put one on each arm. I’d give the opening a few minutes and come back to both once the eucalyptus has had time to settle. That’s where I’d expect to learn whether I prefer the original’s softer woody framing or the way the Extrait sets the rose among incense and resins. At this price, I’m interested in which version I want to put on again the next morning. The fact that one may make the bigger impression at the counter would only get me so far.

For now, the new one has done something the price tag should have made considerably harder. It’s made me want to wear it. It’s also reminded me how much of the house I’d like to revisit, which is probably the more expensive discovery of the two.

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