I’ll confess: I had little interest in trying the Arquiste line when it was first announced. Another day, another high-priced niche line with exclusive distribution, historical-geographical references, and minimalist bottles; right? But my curiosity was piqued by Kevin’s review of Flor y Canto and Anima Dulcis, so I sniffed one or two selections during a visit to Barneys; and then I noticed that the newest addition to the line, Aleksandr, was a tribute to the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin. I have fond memories of reading and re-reading Pushkin’s verse-novel Eugene Onegin at one point in my overly prolonged years of education, so I needed to give this fragrance a closer look.

Aleksandr was developed with perfumer Yann Vasnier and includes notes of neroli, violet leaf, fir balsam, Russian leather, and ambrette. It is designed to tell the story of the last day of Pushkin’s life, when the famed writer was mortally wounded in a duel in 1837. The neroli and violet are meant to evoke the hero’s morning toilette, the leather to refer to his gloves and boots, and the fir balsam to evoke the winter landscape around St. Petersburg. I occasionally get irritable when I see literary or cultural references haphazardly grafted onto a fragrance that doesn’t deliver on its promise (can you recall any recent example?), but in Aleksandr’s case, the story is seamlessly joined to the scent…

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