Perfume Review: Curated by Colette Three As Four

Three As Four (As Four, AsFour or As4) is a part of Curated by Colette trio of scents, a collaboration that brought together three of Colette’s favorite fashion designers, As Four, Hussein Chalayan and Bless, and fragrance manufacturers Symrise. Colette is an überhip Paris boutique credited with being the first concept store, As Four is a small, avant-garde New York fashion house famous for its eccentric, offbeat designs. Bring the two together to create a fragrance, I thought, and you will get something innnovative, conceptual and most probably unwearable. Not quite so. According to J C Report, the fashion trio “wanted to use specifically personal ingredients to express who they were, but they also wanted to create a new classic.” I believe that they achieved the latter goal. Created by Symrise perfumer Frank Volkl, Three As Four does indeed has a classic feel; nothing quirky here, this is a coolly elegant, insouciant scent of admirable depth and complexity and incredible wearability. Three As Four starts with a bright, bracing burst of lime. Even though the citrus note stays present in the background throught the fragrance’s development, I would not call As Four a primarily citrus scent. Its concept being based on the idea of “roots of life”, Three As Four is centered around three (of course) roots, ginger, vetiver, and orris. This “rooty-ness” is very evident, it tones down the lime and bergamot, and is indeed the focus of the scent. Like Robin, I adore the iris note in As4. It is a beautiful, multifaceted accord that goes from being moist and fresh, when paired with lime in the top notes, to the raw, earthy note, when accompanied by vetiver and woods, in heart and base notes. Ginger is most apparent on my skin in the drydown, it adds spicy kick to the iris-cedar-sandalwood-vetiver blend. If Three As Four were a color and a fabric, it would have been pale grey-green silk. Three As Four is most definitely “full bottle worthy” for me; I anticipate that it is going to be especially wonderful in summer. I am not sure, however, that I can afford to wait till summer to acquire a bottle, because apparently only 300 bottles were produced. Right now 1,7oz bottles of Three As Four are available at Colette.fr, for €50.00, or at Aedes, for $95.00.