Good vibrations, Olivier Durbano Pink Quartz

When you’re a jewellery maker working with a semi-precious stones and one day you wake up and decide – I want to make a perfume line – it seems to be natural to draw an inspiration from what you’ve been doing so far. If you know that your work is what you love what could possibly go wrong with translating your passion for one thing to the language of fragrances. That’s what Olivier Durbano did, he started making perfumes based on history, myths, legends and magic of the stones. His line is quite successful so you can say that he did it right.

Pink Quartz, the sixth fragrance in a 9 perfume line-up from Olivier Durbano is one of those rare cases when a perfume with a hefty dose of olibanum doesn’t turn overly salty on my olibanum-not-liking skin. I can still detect a saltiness of this note but it’s not as big as in some other cases of olibanum centric scents. This note is quite balmy and I get it as a really cold one. When I smell this perfume I feel like I was transported to some medieval castle or maybe a temple built of stone. To me Pink Quartz opens with a stone-cold sensation. After 15 minutes I start to smell rose. It is cold too and instead of smelling voluptuous and rich it’s more like I was smelling a rose-water rather than a flower itself.

Another 15 minutes later Olivier Durbano Pink Quartz begins to warm up slowly. There’s this beautiful accord of palisander rosewood, quite rare and not commonly used perfume material. It has a noble character of soft wood, a bit of balmy character and it nicely amplifies the rose chord making it now smell more like a flower. After 1 hour of the fragrance development the wearer will probably notice that the composition gains a spicy facet. As I sniff it I’m more and more convinced that I smell saffron which later is joined by creamy and balsamic benzoin note which can be a little bit heady for a moment or two before you get used to it. It’s really pretty and full-bodied.

Later on the resinous stage becomes a leading part of Pink Quartz. There’s a nice amber accord which is surprisingly smoky with a light, airy feeling to it. I haven’t known amber can rendered in such an immaterial, volatile way. Patchouli note adds a little bit of earthiness and density to the entire composition while myrrh – which appears in front of my nose at almost 2,5 hours of wearing – it makes the perfume more contemplative, meditative and spiritual. This stage mostly reminds me of an old wooden church which walls intercepted the aroma of resins and incense

Really interesting and unusual thing happens after 3 hours since the perfume went on my skin. Pink Quartz by Olivier Durbano reveals a citrus facet! Some additives or complexes must’ve been done to postpone the evaporation of citric tones until now. Fragrance encapsulation is a method too. Anyway I can smell a lot of zesty grapefruit which is a bit bitter. There’s also ginger which adds the usual sparkling fizziness as well as some freshness to the blend. The drydown of this fragrance appears after 5 hours and it’s quite mild. It has a woody character reminding of teak wood and perhaps there’s still some rosewood around. Finally there’s a handful of musk but it’s not much pronounced and is covered by smoky and woody elements. Then it slowly loses power and goes away.

Pink Quartz was created by Olivier Durbano in 2010. So far this is my favourite in his collection. The longevity of this perfume is around 8-12 hours, depending on the day and weather conditions and it’s sillage is above average but of course it gets smaller with time. This is an eau de parfum and it comes only in 100ml flacons, simple design. The liquid is stained with a pink dye but the color can lose its stability after a few years and can turn to transparent-yellowish. I didn’t have a chance to check if it stains light-colored clothes, probably not…