Thursday 18 March 2021

SUPERFUSION by J.U.S Parfums

Time has most definitely raced by over the past twelve months, although it might not have always felt like that when we were living it. This lost year has meant pauses to perfume schedules and a quieting down of the usual advertising, so you could be forgiven for having missed some emerging brands. One such company is J.U.S Parfums, which celebrates its third birthday this year. Their credentials are honestly through the roof and, whilst it’s true that the collection really does have something for every taste, I was instantly entranced by the shimmering, musk-laden Superfusion from Céline Ellena.

J.U.S Parfums launched in 2018 thanks to the collaboration of Thierry de Bashmakoff, Jean-Baptiste Roux, and Brigitte Wormser. None of these were strangers to the world of perfumery, but their approach to the new company was far from what would normally have been expected. From the outset the goal was to create fragrances that didn’t so much push the boundaries but rather allow the perfumers to fly. With all restrictions lifted, the debut collection of eleven scents would provide a perfumed platter that was simply too exciting to resist. The question was, who would create them?

The trio decided to go all out and enlist some of the biggest names in the industry and, in an unusual move, not all from the same fragrance house. The perfumers chosen were Aurelien Guichard, Alexandra Carlin, Alienor Massenet, Fabrice Pellegrin, and Céline Ellena. Their combined list of credits truly set the brand apart from the outset and, with an added insistence on French production and sustainability, proudly demonstrated that being artistic could also align itself with being environmental. Céline would create two fragrances for the brand, but her Superfusion takes the concept of musk to a whole new level.

Céline Ellena trained at ISIPCA in Versailles but is now based in her hometown of Grasse. She has an effortless ability to capture delicacy and variety in her creations, and this could have something to do with her grandfather. She told me, “When I was a child he’d crumple flowers, leaves, or earth in his hands, and then he’d ask me to smell them and give a description.” Her father also never wore fragrances at home, preferring to be on an olfactory ‘vacation’ as she describes it, and so her perfume literally became her ingredients. Could this explain why she seems to find it so easy to convey simplicity, subtlety, and space?

Superfusion opens with what can only be described as a duality of shimmery reflection against powderiness, and it’s this that put me in mind of sunlight bouncing off broken china. This is a musk-based fragrance and so that billowing and milky quality is also present from the outset, but within the body you have a slightly peppered jasmine and, one of my favourite ingredients, a touch of lipstick-like cherry creaminess that comes from the heliotropine. The development of the scent sees a delicate woodiness coming through, accompanied but the merest hint of patchouli, but it never overshadows the medley of musks. Alongside a perfectly balanced note of amber imbued tonka, Céline Ellena has created a fragrance that makes you want to just lie back and let it wash over you.

Superfusion is available from the J.U.S Parfums website at jusparfums.com, as well as Harrods, and is priced at €50 for 25ml, €180 for 100ml, and €230 for 200ml. [Sample provided by Phoenix Beauty]

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