Parfums de Marly Herod Eau de Parfum

What It Smells Like

Parfums de Marly Herod is a tobacco and vanilla fragrance, and one of the reference points for that style. It smells like sweet pipe tobacco and cinnamon in a wood-panelled room, with enough smoke and dry wood underneath to keep it from becoming a dessert.

It opens on cinnamon and a peppery wood note, warm rather than sharp. The heart is the reason people buy it: tobacco leaf, which smells honeyed and slightly fruity rather than like cigarette smoke, joined by incense, labdanum (a leathery, ambery resin) and osmanthus, a flower with an apricot-and-suede character.

The base brings vanilla together with cedar, vetiver and cypriol, an earthy, smoky root also called nagarmotha. Iso E Super, a smooth cedar-like material, and musk give the whole thing air, so the sweetness radiates instead of sitting heavily on skin.

Fragrantica's community ranks tobacco as the leading accord, then vanilla, warm spicy, amber and cinnamon. It holds a rating of 4.42 out of 5 from more than 11,000 votes.

Who Made It

Olivier Pescheux, the Givaudan perfumer behind several Diptyque fragrances and one of the three authors of Paco Rabanne 1 Million, composed this one. His work shows how a rich, sweet structure can be made to feel clean rather than heavy.

Who It's For

Herod is for people who want a sweet fragrance with a serious, grown-up backbone. Fragrantica lists it as a masculine, though tobacco and vanilla are worn happily by anyone who likes them.

If you have tried tobacco-vanilla scents that felt syrupy, this is the drier, smokier alternative. If you dislike sweetness altogether, look at Greenley or Castley instead. Compared with Layton it is darker and has none of the apple freshness; compared with Oajan it is less honeyed and more woody.

When to Wear It

This is a cold-weather fragrance, and the votes say so clearly: winter and fall lead by a wide margin on Fragrantica, with summer almost absent. Heat makes the vanilla and tobacco feel thick.

Evening suits it best. Wear it to dinner, on a date, or under a coat and scarf on a winter night, when the smoke and spice have room to open. One or two sprays are plenty indoors.

About the House

Parfums de Marly was founded in Paris in 2009 by Julien Sprecher. The house takes its name and its imagery from the royal château of Marly and from the perfumed court of Louis XV, an era when fragrance was worn lavishly and horse racing was a royal passion. That is why every bottle carries a crest of two rearing horses, and why several of the fragrances, Herod, Godolphin and Darley among them, are named after celebrated horses.

The style is generous and easy to like: rich, long-wearing compositions, each built around one clear idea and usually signed by a well-known perfumer. Parfums de Marly is a boutique-only house at Redolia. It is sold at our perfumery at 92 West Main Street in Somerville, New Jersey, and not through the website. Read how our boutique-only houses work, then come in and try it on skin before you decide.