Spritzing one’s personage with a thrilling bit of history is the very apogee of perfume snobbery. Atkinsons marvellously reinvents its heritage masterpieces in contemporary fragrances. Amber Empire is an extremely Oriental fragrance which transports you on an utterly sensual voyage into the languorous, enigmatic reaches of the Far East. It all began with a Chinese snuffbox, an exquisite Asian Art Deco objet d’art that fired up Atkinsons’ imagination. Amber Empire became one of the first Oriental fragrances introduced to the Western world in 1927, and in its day, was a fascinatingly foreign perfume as ‘mysterious and refined as the ageless East’. However, the 21st-century Amber Empire eau de toilette, created by perfumer Maurice Roucel, is not so much exotic as it is cosmopolitan, contemporary and devilishly sensual. Carved from a precious amber accord, Amber Empire is a moody, atmospheric perfume, vaporous and lingering, a nouveau Oriental fragrance pairing the old world with the new. A fresh, citrus top note of bergamot combines with Chinese magnolia and oolong tea before giving way to a dry-down of vanilla, myrrh, ambroxin and musk. The oolong tea, so prized in Chinese tea rituals, possesses a distinctive mild floral and green earthiness and in concert with an astonishingly pure concentration of white musk (70%), it draws the ambery notes out into a fascinating floral and utterly vaporous aura. This peculiar construction endows Amber Empire with an ambivalent sensuality, as rich as amber and as light as steam rising from tea.
