Bottega Veneta pour Homme EDT (2014)

Nose: Daniela Andrier and Antoine Maisondieu

Despite having won a couple of “prizes” among which the Basenotes Award, apparently this scent seems quite controversial, with many connoisseurs being disappointed by it. It looks like one of those perfect candidates to be discontinued soon – many “people who love fragrances” seem to consider it too trendy and shallow, many “people who love mainstream” probabily consider it too light and understated. Well, I am among the fans instead. Love at first sniff, and it even grew on me. I find Bottega Veneta pour Homme filled with an insane amount of class and intelligence: it’s discreet, utterly enjoyable to wear, rather complex, fascinating and incredibly well blended. The opening is memorable, at least to my tastes: a sort of green, fizzy pine-citrus accord on a super thin yet dark base of patchouli, finished leather, and a warm resinous-floral-earthy note of labdanum which provides a subtle feel of warmth underneath the overall freshness. Now imagine this just whispered, toned down to an almost “meditative” quiet. A refined, hyper-modern concept of elegance, perfectly solid and substantial. It’s like being in a minimalist contemporary building in the middle of the forest: you feel the aromatic cold green breeze from outside, but there is also an aseptic, clean, silent feel of modernity – almost alienated (the astringent citric notes play a role here, as they smell almost like “ammonia” in a way). A sort of futuristic reading of “classic” clean masculine elegance – this is actually the interesting thing here, besides the fact it smells great (not that this is secondary...): the notes I’ve listed are possibly the most common in classic “fresh” colognes, but Bottega Veneta pour Homme smells just completely different from all of them. Miles away from any other cologne. To me, Maisondieu and Andrier perfectly managed to “translate” the classic structures into a future language - made of, well, I don't know what, probably a creative use of synthetics and naturals, or whatever magic they made to make Bottega smell like this. About projection & persistence, which seems quite “debated” as well as many people seem to consider them a flaw here; it is undoubtedly much close to skin, but surprisingly, you smell it “around” you for hours – you get this green-black smell coming and going, which is subtle yet much more distinctive than you think. To cut it short, I’ll be honest: I find this both one of the best “contemporary formal” fragrances at the moment, and call me idiotic, a smart, compelling, clever and apparently completely underrated avantgarde rewriting of classic canons. Which makes Bottega Veneta pour Homme almost challenging to wear, as it’s so deceptively subtle it’s so easy to underrate it and dismiss it as a shallow trendy scent. While it’s not, it’s a veil of great contemporary perfumery. I appreciate Bottega Veneta had the guts to come out with something like this. Although I admit the volume knob may need a fix (but I think they made the “extreme” version for that?), I personally love this a lot.

8,5/10