Checkmate
Lemon and bergamot open Checkmate with a bright, briefly tart citrus note, cardamom threading underneath with a faintly warm, aromatic edge.
The scent fingerprint
Weighted by intensity across 13 accords.
Every perfume in Sillage is represented as a distribution across canonical accord slugs — a lingua franca for scent. Two fragrances with overlapping fingerprints are scent-twins, even if they share no literal note.
- Fresh50
- Soft Spicy50
- Aromatic50
- Warm Spicy
The note pyramid
- Lemon
- Cardamom
- Bergamot
- Leather
- Heliotrope
- Iris
By the editors · 2 min readLemon and bergamot open Checkmate with a bright, briefly tart citrus note, cardamom threading underneath with a faintly warm, aromatic edge. The opening is crisp but not cold — the spice keeps things grounded from the start.
Leather arrives in the heart alongside heliotrope and iris, which together create a powdery, slightly floral counterpoint to the leather's dry, slightly animalic character. The iris adds a cool, rooty quality that keeps the leather from becoming too heavy. Amberwood and cedar in the base deepen everything, adding a dry woody warmth.
The overall character is structured: citrus-spice over powdery leather over dry wood. It reads as formal and controlled, suited to cooler weather and considered wear.
Scent twins
Factual metadata (name, house, year, notes) is seeded from public datasets. The editorial reading and scent fingerprint are written by Claude against our house style — none of it is scraped prose. Read our methodology.