The Story
Why it exists.
The beginning
Aeterna Amantes takes its name from Latin roots suggesting something like eternal lovers, the throughline Leslie Smith built this composition around. The perfume grew from the BG3 Collection, a series of Siren Song Elixirs scents inspired by Baldur's Gate III characters. Here the muse is Astarion, the vampire whose affection curdles into something possessive and immortal. The brief was devotion without expiration date, a love that doesn't flinch when the sun goes down. Smith answered with an androgynous blend that borrows the sharp citrus and resinous bones of the character's original profile, then thickens the skin around them with warmer woods and golden amber. Bergamot lifts the first breath with a clean, almost effervescent snap.
The unusual move here is the tension between chamomile's quiet herbal softness and the incense-heavy resin stack of frankincense and myrrh. Chamomile usually lives in sleep teas and baby products, not in compositions built around mahogany and black pepper. Smith uses that gentleness as counterweight, a balm under the resin so the incense reads meditative instead of funereal. Orchid and vanilla carry the floral sweetness without tipping into lipstick territory. The androgynous framing isn't marketing; it's structural. Cypress and mahogany pull one direction, night orchid and amber pull the other, and the perfume never fully settles which side wins.
The evolution
The first thirty minutes are deceptive. Bergamot arrives bright, almost cheerful, and the brandy underneath reads like a splash of something poured neat. Then the chamomile and black pepper surface together, and the brightness dims to something candlelit. By the second hour the resins take over. Frankincense and myrrh thicken the air, sandalwood smooths the edges, and the mahogany grounds everything into furniture-grade warmth. Orchid appears like a rumor, not a statement. The drydown is where Aeterna Amantes earns its name. Amber and vanilla settle into a skin-scent that lingers long into the evening, closer to warm wood and golden resin than anything floral. On fabric the next morning, it's a quiet trace of incense and cream.
Cultural impact
Aeterna Amantes sits within the BG3 Collection from Siren Song Elixirs, a direct translation of character into scent. As part of that lineup, it belongs to a small body of indie perfume work that takes specific fictional figures and renders them in olfactory terms, treating the source material as a creative constraint rather than a marketing gimmick. The androgynous framing of the composition marks it as intentionally unbound from the gendered marketing conventions that dominate much of mainstream fragrance, instead positioning itself in a space where character and mood lead.
