Le Labo’s Santal 33 is the not-so-secret scent of every chic girl you know. It’s not new – it first launched over a decade ago – yet its unique, unisex trail has managed to secure the kind of longevity that rarely happens in perfumery.
Loved by everyone from Alexa Chung to Jodie Comer, Santal 33 is a scent that has transcended its cult status, ending up somewhere between the unknown and the ubiquitous: celebrated by fragrance heads, yet still deliciously satisfying to reveal to an uninitiated acquaintance.
You’re either in the Le Labo club or you’re an outsider, still purchasing your perfumes based on the star power of the TV ad, or the safety of the scent. There’s even a club within the club for the people who wore it before it became so cool.
Santal 33 represents a willingness to take a risk, but only a tiny one: it’s unusual, but you’re safe in the knowledge that no one has ever actually disliked it. You will smell great to everyone, but you will also smell interesting – the olfactory equivalent of a Ganni dress with knowingly ugly sandals. Imagine soft, papery driftwood, so gentle it's almost creamy, blended with the powdery haze of iris and violet, and you’re on the right lines.
It’s unsurprising to learn that Santal 33 is (alongside the equally beautiful Rose 31) a brand bestseller. Less expected is the fact that it almost never became a perfume: it was originally earmarked for the candle line, and only migrated to the perfume collection after its popularity became apparent.
Le Labo Santal 33: The Story
So, how does one produce such an olfactory barnstormer? It doesn't happen overnight. Santal 33’s famously well-balanced blend of milky sandalwood and comforting iris only came to fruition after a painstaking number of trials. Founder Fabrice Penot set out to create an ode to the American Midwest inspired by those old Marlboro adverts: think leather-clad cowboy reclining in front of a crackling fire.
'I start with very rough accords and then play with them until something happens…if it happens,' Penot told me. 'For Santal, something started to kick in around modification number 93. I felt we had something there that had the potential to be powerful.'
'Then, I got lost in hundreds of other trials and realised that the theme we had in 93 was lost. We decided to throw away a year's work and start again – the solution was a few moves away, adding a "key" that unlocked the whole formula. That key is the secret of Santal, which is preventing all the copies out there from achieving the same effect.' Indeed, the key to longevity is to become immune to dupes.
Penot never expected Santal 33 to become such a hit: which is understandable, when you consider it was born into the saccharine, celebrity-glazed zeitgeist of the early Noughties. 'Never in our wildest dreams did we expect to create such a wave. Maybe we lacked imagination, but you can’t know what is going to resonate for other people - you just do your best and let it go out in the world.'
Santal 33 might be the Le Labo scent to unite us all, but Penot is keen for it not to precede the brand, highlighting the fact that there are plenty of other stellar fragrances to discover in the line. (The next-level obsessives know the ultimate brag is to tell curious acquaintances that your scent comes from the City Exclusives line, which is available online and worldwide for just one month of each year.)
'We owe a lot to Santal but we would be also very happy without it – we have a family of scents we are proud of and which are sometimes overshadowed by the focus on Santal,' he says. 'It is obviously a bittersweet feeling, but that’s the price every creator has to pay when something takes off.'
'Having said that, it is obviously extremely rewarding to have created something that is considered by some as the scent of an era. Hopefully it will outlast it.'