The Story
Why it exists.
The beginning
Favorite launched in 2018, and the brief was straightforward: an aromatic aquatic for men that could carry a full day without becoming the loudest thing in the room. Faberlic brought in Bertrand Duchaufour, a perfumer who approached the project with a desire to do something lighter and more approachable than some of his more polarizing work. The kind of scent a man reaches for on a Tuesday morning without thinking twice. His signature still shows up in the structure, the way ozonic notes sit against warm carnation rather than floating free of them, the way the base builds around sandalwood and palisander rosewood instead of letting the citrus dissolve into nothing. But the scale is dialed down. The edges are softened.
The interesting move here is pairing ozonic and marine notes with carnation in the heart. Ozone reads cold and metallic while carnation reads dark, spicy, and almost sweet, and threading those two languages together is a risk that could easily collapse into incoherence. What holds it together is the geranium and lavender sitting between them, geranium lending its green, slightly bitter floral edge and lavender offering a cool herbal softness, both of which work as a kind of bridge, cooling the carnation down and warming the ozone up until they share a middle register.
The evolution
The opening is immediate and bright. Bergamot, grapefruit, lemon, and orange hit all at once, no waiting, no slow build, just a clean citrus burst that registers as a single shimmering chord before the structure underneath starts to take over. What replaces it isn't a single note but a blend. Carnation comes forward alongside geranium and lavender, the ozonic notes arriving almost like a cool wash of air rather than something you can point to. The marine element reads more as humidity than as ocean, the feeling of stepping out of a shower into a room with the window cracked open, a soft saline hush rather than a briny wave. The heart then transitions into its base, and this is where the fragrance settles into its quieter character.
Cultural impact
Favorite holds an interesting place because of who composed it. Bertrand Duchaufour is a perfumer with a recognizable body of work, and anyone familiar with his name will come to this bottle with a sense of what to expect. What they find is something trimmed back, lighter in scale, built around an aromatic aquatic skeleton rather than the denser compositions he has explored elsewhere. That gap between expectation and delivery is part of what makes the fragrance worth sitting with, since it shows the same hand working in a register that doesn't always get associated with his name. It's also a scent that rewards quiet attention.
The House
FaberlicFaberlic is a Russian cosmetics and fragrance house that grew from a direct‑selling concept into a nationwide manufacturing operation. The brand offers a broad portfolio that includes skin‑care, makeup, household products and a line of modern perfumes. Its products reach consumers through a network of independent consultants and a growing e‑commerce platform, positioning the company as a familiar name in everyday beauty across Russia and several neighboring markets.
The Creator
Bertrand DuchaufourDuchaufour is the master of smoke and shadow, of incense rendered with painterly depth rather than theatrical force. Where many perfumers treat frankincense as a single note, he builds incense as a tonal range, capable of austerity or warmth depending on what the fragrance dem…
