Années Folles by La Parfumerie Moderne (2015)

I was very eager to try this new creation by La Parfumerie Moderne, which is nearly the only new French niche act (of, say, the last 2-3 years) I personally consider worthy consideration and praise. And I surely appreciate the fact it took nearly two years for them to come up with a single new offering – in a time when niche brands launch a whole line once, sometimes even twice a year, that’s a true mirage. And well... once I sampled this, my expectations were decidedly exceeded. You can skip my boring detailed review and just trust me: Années Folles is absolutely great, probably the best offering by this brand, and in my opinion, one of the best works by Corticchiato. Années Folles surprised me for several reasons in fact, the first of which in chronological order being its breathtakingly rich opening. The fragrance starts with a truly sumptuous, yet actually rather simple structure of lavender (bold, deep, balsamic and “skanky” double-distilled lavender absolue) blended in a dusty-herbal frame of Mediterranean herbs and spices (thyme, nutmeg) and paired with a very clever and delightfully harmonic core of geranium and vetiver, which is quite subtle at first, but the drydown will do it justice. A veritable triumph of lavender (I think this was missing in Corticchiato’s portfolio?) and woody herbs supported by a gentle cascade of dusty resinous notes of tonka, patchouli and myrrh, vith a vague aftertaste of dry vanilla. 

So basically Années Folles opens as a creative, remarkably well-executed mix of a breezy Mediterranean green-woody cologne, a formal, dusty old-school French “barbershop” lavender-based fougère, and a tangy, warm Oriental spicy-ambery-resinous blend. Floral, herbal and resinous, melting together a classic French inspiration (powdery, soapy, at the same time kind of dirty traditional fougère notes) with a whiff of Mediterranean rawness following Corticchiato’s fondness for herbs and green notes, brilliantly warmed by a touch of Oriental aromatic and dusty spiciness (blending with the French part to echo a sort of “Guerlinade”). All in the most genuine quality, almost an “artisanal” quality of materials, but with a rather mannered appearance – a sort of sophisticated, distinguished, kind of melancholic look in which the “rawness” and the depth of lavender and of the Mediterranean and Oriental inspirations are elegantly tamed down, as if the center and the perspective of the fragrance still remain rooted in a certain French sense of discreet, slightly decadent “chic”. Mediterranean and Parisian at once, so to speak, all filtered in faded, dusty sepia tones. 

The evolution brilliantly unravels the vetiver heart, with a transition towards a powdery and smoky drydown tinged with masculine nuances of geranium and darker spices, and still a sharp hint of thyme. Some of the initial lavender-herbal “raw” greenness slowly fades away, bringing in a warmer, sort of talc-like and slightly sweet feel, reaching a (rather close to skin – maybe a tad too much for many) final drydown based on a very simple, delightfully cozy whiff of spicy-floral vetiver dusted with fine talc. Lavender remains as a “fil rouge” throughout the scent, with a shimmering transition from a bolder initial phase, to an ethereal, discreet powdery-soapy presence on the drydown.

So, to cut it short, Années Folles smells fairly “old school” on one side (a French digest ranging from Guerlain’s Mouchoir de Monsieur to Pierre Cardin pour Monsieur), and very modern on the other – the “modern” factor being an extremely fascinating weightless texture, which smells as much rich as crisp and somehow very breezy and almost thin, with a dark shade, or better say a “mist” feel. French, Mediterranean and Oriental inspirations are very effortlessly blended together in a sophisticated, natural, discreet blend with a very neat composition and a fantastic refined presence on skin. For some reasons this fragrance smells quite different from any other work by Corticchiato, both for the materials used (there’s a more massive natural feel here for me) and for the way its is composed and how it behaves on skin. I think this it is at once the most “old school” scent by him (except maybe for Musc Tonkin) and the most creative one, and it seems he really tried to use at best the natural behaviour of the materials with no “synthetic help” and no formal patterns – rather combining some of them. I really enjoy this fragrance, as it smells rich and fulfilling yet very approachable and actually simple to enjoy, extremely sophisticated but very cozy and versatile. As regards of the projection, Années Folles won’t be a bold “compliment getter” bomb as it soon sits rather close to skin, but that’s how most of elegant and quality scents perform. But well, I don’t want to start sounding servile or suspiciously enthusiastic, so... Just support the last good niche we have, don’t miss this.

8,5/10

Bois d'Iris by Van Cleef & Arpels (2009)

Nose: Emilie Coppermann

I must admit it: I’ve a penchant for iris fragrances. As long as they’re even just decent, I always like them a lot. It amazes me how versatile this material can be, and how many nuances it offers. It can smell warm and luscious, dusty and cold, “grey” and “red”, plushy and earthy, and always so refined and mysterious. Anyway, Bois d’Iris is surely a remarkable must for any fan of this material, probably even more than other more praised ones in my opinion. It explores the colder-dustier and more balsamic side of iris, pairing it with dry resins, warm amber, a very peculiar sort of “greyish”, massively incense-driven crisp woody note, and a sort of rarefied foggy pine-forest feel. So imagine a breezy, balsamic, woody and above all, dusty-powdery incense scent, completely unisex and actually quite dark somehow, or better say “cold”, peaceful yet somehow aloof. Almost “lunar”, I’d say. And extremely refined: the dustiness has some very fascinating sort of sparkling texture – “silver powder”, so to speak. Dior named a scent “Bois d’Argent”, but that name would be so better for  Bois d’Iris actually. By the way the two scents are indeed quite similar, but I prefer Bois d’Iris, for a couple of very simple features: less pretentious, more substantial.

What fascinates me about this scent is how it creates a shimmering, rarefied sort of “silver incense” vibe played on iris powder and resinous-balsamic woody notes, without using directly incense.  I mean, this fragrance smells quite incensey to me, but in a peculiar way, “incensey and not-incensey at once”. Maybe more than incense I should say “a whiff of cold, azure-grey smoky breeze scented with iris and luxury resins”, as it feels weightless and airy yet surprisingly substantial, balsamic, enveloping. Truly one of a kind, extremely enjoyable and fascinating. Shortly – if it wasn’t clear already – I really like this scent: it feels quality, it’s extremely sophisticated, it’s delicate but not light or too close to skin – just elegantly discreet.  I own other iris based scents, and this has definitely its own personality which makes it worth owning even if you think you’ve “smelled them all” when it comes to iris. Maybe a tad too expensive, but a true class act!

8/10

Boellis: Panama 1924 Millesimé (2010) and Fefé Dandy Napoletano (2015)

The nose for both is Maurizio Cerizza. Big fan of both Daytona and classic Panama 1924.

***

I surely agree with the reviews comparing Panama 1924 Millesimé with Cartier’s Déclaration, as the opening is very similar and plays more or less the same chords – spicy cardamom, elegant crisp musky woods, a whiff of masculine flowers (jasmine and carnation for me, or something similar to it, maybe rose too), saffron and some very light tangy citrus. But the similarity doesn’t really last long, though: from the very beginning in fact, Millesimé does have some more richness, smelling at once more refined and more natural than the Cartier’s. And a bit warmer too, thanks to musk and ambergris – the same, quite good dusty-salty musky ambergris base you get in nearly any scent produced by Profumitalia (Boellis and Hugh Parsons, just to name two brands they manage – just compare two random scents for each, you’ll smell the same base notes). 

During its evolution, and this is a quality product with some elegant and shimmering evolution, the initial spicy notes – except maybe saffron, which lasts longer – tone down progressively, leaving the stage to an exceedingly pleasant, classy and soothing floral-vetiver core accord still with some subtle pungent spicy edges, musk and some nondescript sort of “juicy” feel which I guess it’s that “tea” note – more a sort of a greenish rose for me, actually. Vetiver gets an increasingly prominent role, and it’s basically the star of the drydown, tinged with some floral nuances and a dusty musky-ambery base accord, which soon becomes a bit leathery too (I think it’s a side nuance of saffron).

So, basically another winner from Boellis in my book. As for the others from this brand, this is really nothing overly creative, and surely it does try to “emulate” a certain type of established crowdpleasers: but it does it with great class, great understatement and great quality. It feels just very mature, distinguished, yet informal and totally affable. To the point it, say, “exceeds” its masters and becomes actually better than them – so yes, for me this is quite better than Déclaration or similar scents. Same tones, same chords, better class and better quality. It has that same soapy “barbershop” vibe of other Boellis fragrances, that effortless Italian class, a shade of musky-amber refined melancholy well paired with some more luminous spicy-green nuances, and it’s just more fascinating, richer and more sophisticated than the Cartier’s in my opinion – also getting rid of that “sanitized” sort of artificial designer feel. The name is a bit pretentious perhaps as I don’t get the “millesimé” factor, but it’s surely recommended nonetheless.

7,5-8/10 

***

This new offering by Boellis is also probably their most creative one so far. The color of the packaging (bright bold orange) and the Neapolitan reference misled me at first, I thought this would have been some bright, lively fresh zesty scent, but the notes intrigued me as it seemed actually darker and rounder. And in fact it is, this is by far the darker and also quite more complex scent by this brand. But at the same time, probably the one I enjoy the less.

Basically Fefé is a patchouli-musk bomb with a massive dusty-powdery-woody feel, truly warm and aromatic (even “culinary” thanks to saffron), barely enlightened by some very subtle whiff of citrus greenness. Patchouli, musk and a dusty woody-ambergris accord sit at the core of this scent like big, bold, humid Stonehenge stones: imagine the smell of some antique, kind of musty Belle Epoque closet, with its earthy-powdery and woody nuances, and that nondescript smell of damp dust and old abandoned garments. Refined and melancholic at once, and I surely get the reference to a Neapolitan dandy – a quite evocative and quality portrait of the Italian heritage of laid-back dapper gents of the early Nineteenth century. Or well, of any gentleman of that era, and this is the smell you still can get in some very old boutiques (dusty barbershop boutiques, again... you can’t really say Boellis hasn’t a very clear “fil rouge” throughout their offerings).

The scent is quite complex for me, as the way the notes interact smells quite new to me, but at the same time it doesn’t evolve that much, so that’s pretty much it – patchouli, musk, amber, earthy-powdery nuances, a dusty sort of “damp stones” feel mixed with a soapy vibe. It smells good, but well... quite a bit cloying after a while, honestly. Not sure if that’s intended, but it does seem a bit static, and given the boldness of the notes and their dusty-damp feel, you would probably prefer it to evolve a bit, to “open” somehow, to lose some weight and strength as it feels quite thick and almost haunting after a while. Or just a bit boring. Nonetheless the smell per se is very good, so if you like it or if you’re looking for an unusual patchouli-powdery scent, then it’s a deal. I do like it, but it’s really not an “everyday scent” or something I’d want to reach often.

6,5-7/10  

A*Men Pure Leather by Thierry Mugler (2012)

Well, this is an interesting fragrance with an interestingly polarizing reception among fragrance aficionados. My opinion on this is that it’s very nice. Nice and fascinating, and quite unique too, in its own subtle way. Does it smell like A*Men? Yes, it does, it’s 90% identical - it’s a flanker, after all. But still, it has some key features that makes it not redundant if you like or already own classic A*Men. First of all, it smells as a washed, lighter version of it; less challenging to pull off, more dry, kind of darker, surely more simple. A “thinned out” A*Men, so to speak – and that’s nice for me, since A*Men can get sometimes tough and overwhelming to wear. Second, contrary to other reviewers, I do get very clearly the leather facet here, and I really like it. I expected something different, a duller and more mainstream leather accord glued to A*Men like a drugstore patch, while I think that leather here is processed in a very creative and quite classy way.

More than a specific note, in fact, it actually really feels like if they gave A*Men a “polished leather look”, an overall “leather treatment” infusing it with a subtle, yet robust smell of new, tar-like, oddly sweetish polished leather. Obviously the “leather infusion” mentioned on the box is marketing nonsense (and knowing Mugler’s aesthetics, chances are it’s subtly ironic), but still I admit that that’s the effect: I think this does really smell like A*Men drenched in leather. And again, I must stress that for me the leather feel here is quite realistic, unusual and surprisingly well put together. Synthetic, sure, but that’s the smell of most of todays’ leather goods treated with chemical agents. And I guess that many people don’t get the leather facet because they’re looking for some more common, standard leather note, while here leather is kind of “all over” – it’s the ambiance, the frame itself, so you’ve to, say, “zoom out” and look at the entirety of the scent to get it. That’s my reading of this scent. Besides the all-over leather effect, the rest is quite A*Men with no particular variations except for a fresher and thinner look – if you aren’t familiar with that masterpiece, then imagine a bizarre musky-minty-soapy gourmand bomb with lavender, resins, tonka, fresh edges and a dark patchouli-cocoa base. Imagine that, sprayed on a new pair of leather sneakers.

The more I wear this clever pastiche, the more I like it, and I think the subtle yet very competent and creative leather variation is remarkable, and I’m afraid quite underrated (or even more sadly, just snobbed because “it’s Mugler”). If you see it with an “out of the box” approach, and take it as the crazy gourmand oddball drenched in subtle leather that it is, then it’s more valuable and creative than the majority of “avantgarde” niche leathers. It has some cheap facets, but they’re fun – and so is this scent, nothing particularly refined and probably not that versatile too, but fun, nice and unusual. Totally remarkable for the price.

7,5/10

Soul by Costume National (2015)

Nose: Dominique Ropion

This new addition to Costume National’s fragrances range represents the unnecessary confirmation that the only good Costume National scents ever made where the early couple of ones composed by Bruyère – 21 and Scent Intense. It almost seems the guys at Costume National share this feeling as well, since Soul smells basically like an unneeded rewriting of Scent Intense crossed with influences from some of those contemporary Middle East cheap brands which are quite invading the market lately – brands like Arabian Oud, Lattafa, Swiss Arabian and countless of similar ones, with their nuclear, and often sweetish spicy-smoky oud and/or leather blends. Soul is for me exactly halfway all of that, and I wonder why they hired some renowned nose like Ropion for such an uninspired, clerical copy-and-paste job. Soul definitely keeps Scent Intense’s peculiar bone structure of powerful, sort of dry and extremely synthetic amber-musk-fruity notes, and boringly crosses it with a smoky praline of vanilla and artificial, sort of medicinal-nutty oud with a dark shade of leathery patchouli and a greyish salty feel of ambergris. The result is basically “Scent Intense Oud & Patchouli” with a whiff of M7’s trademark ambery-medicinal oud.

Is it any good? Well, sort of. If you like Scent Intense, then that’s still way above this, as it smells richer, more quality and more fascinatingly complex, and also kind of more focused; if you don’t care for it, then Soul may be a slightly more peculiar than usual sort of “futuristic”, androgynous, dirty yet sort of “aseptic” take on oud and synthetic leather with an initially stomach-piercing galore of powdery-musky vanilla tinged with a nondescript candy vibe. A powerful sweetish musky candy with a drop of cheap smoky oud & patchouli, and an everlasting artificial and linear drydown... sounds familiar, eh? Nothing that probably some Middle Eastern drugstore brand isn’t already doing for ten dollars a bottle. Not abysmal, but go for Scent Intense anyway.

6-6,5/10

Panama 1924 by Boellis

Nose: Maurizio Cerizza (not sure)

Well, I’m impressed. Not that anyone should care, but I just realised that Boellis (or Panama 1924, I still have not clear which is the brand name of this line precisely) is perhaps my favourite Italian niche house. First because – pardon the pun - it’s out of Italian niche: out of tradeshows, promotional blog whoring, demented marketing ploys, absurd pricing range. Second because their products are truly good, and each of them really matches my tastes. I’m already a big fan of Panama 1924 Daytona, which quite grew on me over time, but I was still missing the classic Panama 1924; now that I tried it, I can’t say nothing but good things about this as well. A truly rich, solid and compelling tobacco-lavender “barbershop” scent with a veritable material feel of warm, vanillic ambery-powdery dustiness, perfectly supported by a really natural accord of something similar to a touch of anisic herbs, hay (both may be just nuances of lavender, though) and a gentle mossy-patchouli shade on the very base, briefly refreshed by an initial burst of refined, lukewarm and tea-like bergamot notes.

That’s it; mostly a tobacco-powdery scent, shortly, with a remarkably refined feel of dusty natural warmth. Basically something blending Odori Tabacco, several powdery scents for men (from Le Male to Jaipur Homme), anisic-lavender fougères from Azzaro pour Homme on, and a plain natural shaving soap bar. Panama 1924 does brilliantly evoke the shabby, yet refined atmosphere of a typical Italian old-school barber shop – which in the end, is Boellis’ (true and actual) heritage. The smell of soaps, powder, talc, antique woods, linen jackets with dusky tobacco in their inner pockets, all smoothened by a whiff of sweet notes (thus evoking the other pillar of the Italian, and specifically Neapolitan culture – food). All with the perfect sillage and a long, pleasant, non-artificial persistence.

I find this scent as much simple as amazing, I think it’s really well blended, with quality ingredients, and whoever composed this had very clear in mind what to take inspiration from, and for what type of audience. Nothing overly creative, nothing “luxury”, just nonchalantly classy and extremely enjoyable. A cozy little essay of “sprezzatura” in a bottle worth every penny of its price. Recommended.

8-8,5/10

Habit Rouge Dress Code by Guerlain (2015)

Nose: Thierry Wasser

By far the best novelty of 2015 for me, even if the year hasn’t ended yet. I must start by saying that I am not crazy for classic Habit Rouge; I really respect and appreciate it, but I like it really mildly – for no specific reasons, it just never completely “clicked” for me. Dress Code instead, I fell in love with it from the very first sniff, and I wouldn’t know where to start with to motivate why. It smells at once really complex, really quality, completely new for me yet robustly rooted into the classic heritage at the same time (starting from Habit Rouge itself), and just tremendously good. Basically, I think Dress Code may basically and inaccurately be described as a sort of remarkably inspired blend which brilliantly mixes Habit Rouge, the Guerlain Homme line (notably Intense), several classic French masterworks like Mouchoir de Monsieur or Monsieur de Givenchy, an apparently unrelated contemporary designer vein (mostly for a subtle and sharp smoky-woody base layer) and a tiny bit of vintage Hermès Bel Ami too, especially the way leather gets a floral-sweet treatment there. There’s some echoes of Tom Ford Noir too for me, which was however a clear tribute to Guerlain’s classics, so here we are again. There’s a lot going on here, and yet it is all so well blended it’s really hard (and eventually pointless) to “read” it.

Anyway, shortly Dress Code opens with a fresh and soapy bergamot-rose-barbershop accord with some quality vanilla, a sprinkle of mild brownish spices (cloves and nutmeg above all, as a distant whiff of a classic Bay Rum) and a dry, sort of incense-infused leather woody base, all tinged with a really peculiar and quite prominent sort of really sophisticated dusty powdery-gourmand feel of what I think Guerlain calls “praline” here – which is basically a gentle cascade of delightful vanillic powder with a truly clever sort of spicy and “toasted” aftertaste, perfectly keeping the “autumnal” feel of Habit Rouge and balancing the sweetness. I expected something more cloying, while this sweet accord is really subtle and mannered, and yet decidedly there.

At first, Dress Code is quite uplifting, even fresh and well more Oriental than classic Habit Rouge, also pleasantly “barbershop-clean”, showing some slight boozy nuances as well – hence my reference to Guerlain Homme Intense; that same sort of distinguished woody-herbal booziness is partially here too (and actually, with a hint of 2003 Gucci pour Homme’s incense woodiness as well) just evolving then under a completely different light. A darker, more luscious, dirtier and, say, “ambiguously sweeter” light – where the ambiguity lies in the Frenchies’ tradermark fondness for sweetness and dirtiness . The evolution is truly dynamic and shimmering, and is in fact all about a descent into a dandy’s closet; powder, nondescript sweet dust, dead flowers, a whiff of salty antique woods (maybe vetiver), luxury leather (true luxury: tanned, rich, comforting, really smooth but sharp – paired with spices, floral notes and a hint of sweetness, here’s why I mentioned vintage Bel Ami). The freshness goes almost entirely away soon except for a hint of citrus, leather becomes earthier and saltier, a gust of warm wind spreads the dirty, spicy, sweet powder all over. And still, Dress Code remains inexplicably gentle, distinguished and almost weightless. This scent is quite all about that - sweet but dark, innocently powdery and dirty at once, mature and really sophisticated yet sort of light and youthful, comprising a whole timelapse over Guerlain’s history in a whiff. It’s quite hard for me to describe this fragrance and its evolution properly, as lots of nuances and notes smell really new to me (better say, the way they are presented and how they evolve); but well, you can just expect a brilliant, refined, cozy combination of classic and contemporary bearing a lot of echoes of stuff you know (more or less the names I mentioned so far), and yet smelling like nothing else. The evolution is really great, and the performance is really fine – this scent is quite more discreet than it may seem from the composition, but it’s not ephemeral at all.

I think Wasser did a truly remarkable job in bringing Guerlain’s DNA and specifically Habit Rouge autumnal formal and “dirty” elegance under a completely new light – not a “designer” light, not a “niche” light, just really new and out of boundaries and definitions, as if he almost tried to get rid of any formal training and just compose “out of the box” to create something quality and new yet solidly rooted into the past, avoiding any cliché. And he surely succeeded for me. Superb.

9/10

Collection L'Homme: Thé Brun by Jean-Charles Brosseau

Nose: Pierre Bourdon
Year: 2005

What an odd scent this is. At first, Thé Brun smells actually quite as a faithful, vibrant, extremely pleasant representation of some traditional Chinese tea (I thought of the Oolong, too). Genuine dark brown leaves out of the bag. Quite a complex and really vivid structure of earthy, pungent, dry nuances blended with an uplifting fruity-herbal-balsamic heart and some really mild sweet-vanillic-floral nuances. Now, the odd part is that to my nose there’s at least two other major accords which smell at the same time perfect, and completely random; a really bold, fairly cheap and almost acrid sort of musk-hedione base (sort of a damp, grassy, slightly milky and extremely musky accord with a hint of pungent fruitiness) and a greyish, ashy-rubbery note, quite synthetic as well, the same exact kind of ashy-mossy rubberiness found in Bulgari Black, or in several works by Rasquinet (notably the MiN NY line, or Bois d’ascèse). It’s a dark grey, dusty, salty yet slightly camphorous feel similar to ambergris, which for some reasons, goes just perfectly with the brighter earthy-herbal tea heart of the fragrance and the sort of “lactonic” musky-green accord - which is quite bold as well, with also nuances of tarragon and bamboo (and some woods too, but I can’t detect them in detail). I know it may be hard to imagine how Thé Brun smells overall, and in fact it’s quite a unique and complex blend – not necessarily a good thing (but well, it kind of is here).

So basically, for me Thé Brun smells initially and for quite a while, like a sort of intricated hybrid between something like O de Lancome pour Homme and something like Bulgari Black, both gravitating around a grey-brownish balsamic heart of woody-earthy dry tea leaves. Quite fascinating overall, honestly a bit screechy but for some reasons, with a really peculiar and overall fascinating feel of “something smells wrong, but I can’t stop sniffing it” (most surely it’s the fruity nuances meeting the rubbery-ashy ones causing that). It feels like a bizarre mosaic of diverse inspirations – the archaic heritage of Oriental tea, the smell of a moldy grass field under the rain, and a whole range of artificial smells of rubber, ash, dirt, damp wood, wet concrete. So well, now that I think of it, it may make sense to connect these inspirations and imagine a shabby suburban teahouse in some desolated Chinese metropolitan district. Somewhere you can still drink an excellent cup of tea, just not in a postcard setting, but rather sitting in front of a crippled window looking at uncultivated grass bushes erupting out of an abandoned parking lot. I’m not entirely sure whether Brosseau wanted to evoke such a post-communist forlorn atmosphere, but it’s still better than the usual Oriental clichés in perfumery.

Anyway, back to the actual smell: pretty linear for a while, until the grassy-herbal-tea heart progressively vanishes and on the other hand, the ashy-musky base becomes warmer, gentler, in a way absorbing the top notes as if the whole tea-herbal stuff evolves and disappears as a result of an “infusion” among the base notes. At this time some of the screechy “oddness” is gone, and Thé Brun gets surprisingly refined and soothing, with a discreet smoky-musky presence with a sprinkle of amber yet still a bit grassy and balsamic, lasting quite long and projecting just fine.

I’m not entirely sold, but this is surely quite worthy a sniff.

7-7,5/10

Extract of Mysore Sandalwood by Crabtree & Evelyn (1970)

I was really eager to put my hands on this mythical vintage “Extract of Mysore Sandalwood” by Crabtree & Evelyn, since it is apparently considered among the most vibrant and truthul representations of authentic Mysore sandalwood in perfumery, as it shall contain some. Now, I am not an expert of sandalwood, so I can’t comment on the degree of authenticity and quality of sandalwood here; all I can say is that this fragrance smells terrific, period. Easily the best scent I’ve ever smelled among the ones containing “sandalwood” in their name. It’s just magic, and it truly makes you consider other sandalwood scents in perspective.

At first, there’s a tremendous blast of balsamic, slightly anisic and creamy sandalwood with a drop of citrus and an impressive “material” woody texture, joined by a really peculiar sort of earthy, almost ashy and even slightly fecal undertone; it’s truly subtle, but it’s there, creating a really vibrant dark and organic shade blending with the luminous, soapy, balmy uplifting creaminess of this wood. It feels like an instant Polaroid of a sandalwood plantation, which I’ve never even saw in pictures, so it’s just my imagination speaking - but that’s the beauty of fragrances. It’s soapy and exotically sweet, but now I see what “synthetic” means in relation to sandalwood – it’s a whole different kind of sweet soapiness the one you smell here. It’s just natural, deep, imperfect. It doesn’t pierce your nose or go right into your stomach, it’s not musk-driven, it doesn’t smell like laundry machines or cheap candies. It’s the kind of sophisticated, weightless woody sweetness you maybe got in the drydown of some vintage masculine scents like Egoiste or Tiffany for Men, just in a free, pure, complete and more “amplified” form here.

The evolution is quite dynamic then, and I guess that’s another key point of difference from any synthetic sandalwood scent. And again, it just feels as the natural course of an “organic” smell – it becomes warmer, dustier, drier, lighter too but it doesn’t entirely fade away. It just gently sits on skin with a peaceful, yet intricated harmony of soapiness, creaminess, dry woodiness, and a whole range of “rural” nuances coming and going – from hay, to indolic nuances. It gets darker and smokier for a while at first, then progressively breezier and brighter, and also simpler, more purely soapy and balmy. More and more discreet as well as time passes, but long lasting. Finally, just a note: don’t expect anything complex though, as this is a truly simple fragrance. Lots of nuances,but still gravitating around almost a single accord. Outstandingly, sumptuously, richly simple and quintessential, if you get what I mean, easy to love like a piece of perfect blue sky.

So overall, a true gem in my opinion. I must say though that the subsequent “Sandalwood” which Crabtree and Evelyn made in 2004 (discontinued as well, I think, but easier to get) is a truly remarkable and successful effort of bringing back some of these feelings and nuances of the original Extract, in a synthetic sandalwood fragrance. Some, if not most part of the magic is gone, and indeed you get a flatter, more artificial texture, but the final smell is amazingly close to this. The Extract is still worth its money in my opinion, since besides the smell there’s just a fantastic “experience” flowing out the bottle, but “Sandalwood” comes just right after with its tolerable compromises on quality. I own both and despite they smell similar, they don’t feel redundant.

9/10

Brioni by Brioni (2014)

Nose: Raymond Matts

So, finally I was able to try this expensive, sought-after (and discontinued?) “gem”. I’m usually quite a fan of tailors/bespoke brands fragrances, they often seem to put some more budget and care in their products, and seem able to infuse them with some true sense of class and discreet elegance contrary to many other designers - not to mention niche. To this extent, Brioni is not an exception and would be surely worthy a normal high-end designer price. Is it worthy *that* price I see on eBay and online shops now? Absolutely no. Not at all. It’s as much nice as far from being particularly memorable from any extent. It is basically a really decent, refined masculine citrus-woody fragrance with some smoke, cedar, lavender, some balsamic and crisp herbs and spices – shortly, a really classic citrus-green cologne with a classy Mediterranean vibe and a subtle woody-soapy bone-structure. A competent, classic “sunny” scent with some smoky wood and an above-average refined presentation. But still, really nothing more than a good designer, something dozens of other fragrances are as well – either designers, or niche’s “designer in disguise”. From some Hermès, to some Dior (Eau Sauvage line in particular) to some recent Guerlain (Coriolan meets Homme L’Eau Boisée), to Boellis, with a sprinkle of Kenzo too - bearing in mind you can almost get one for each, at the total price of a single Brioni Eau de Toilette. Unremarkably solid, with a completely insane price tag.

6,5/10