Bank Holiday - Crap Roundup # 2

I'm in vacation and so does taste!

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Vanille Bourbon EDP by Il Profumo

Year: 2004

Nose: Silvana Casoli

The opening is a cloying vanilla-aldehydes bomb, not even "gourmand", rather "your sister's car freshener". It eventually becomes a bit more gentle settling on a pleasant vanilla-talcum accord, but still lacking in any possible interest. Not bad but plain and pointless.

4,5-5/10

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Lux EDC by Mona di Orio

Year: 2006

Nose: Mona di Orio

I get the tribute to Roudnitska, this is in fact a citrusy chypre with a poudrée feeling and an animalic base, quite a classic fougère cologne. The opening is decent, a bit close to Jicky, but then again... the same random weirdness which is the signature of at least other two fragrances by Mona di Orio, occurs abruptly. A warm, odd, soft gingerbread note comes in, blending with the stale smell of a cadaveric boudoir. Still with a totally out-of-place citrus note. Then you smell like if you accidentally poured a lemonade on your dead grandma for a while, and then it's all basically gone. It must be me, but I don't get this.

4/10

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Carnation EDP by Mona di Orio

Year: 2006

Nose: Mona di Orio

The opening is good: a bold, balanced, rich chypre, with an intriguing base comprising a leather/smoky note (the styrax, I guess) and an almost rancid fruity-rose note. A gloomy chypre with a powdery-vanilla violet side which smells almost like iris, nothin new but still quite good and elegant. Then, well, in a matter of seconds it all goes completely wrong, like when you are on the highway driving peacefully in a mellow, fast traffic flow and a car suddendly loses control and goes zig-zagging before crashing against a pole. It all collapses down in a sort of weird, aldehydated, warm (not in a good way) soup-gingerbread accord with a completely random smell of tennis shoes. You still feel something nice (some floral notes a and some vanillin) but it's like if you drop a cake on the floor, you can still save something, but obviously it's gone wrong. However if you keep re-applying it every 10 minutes you can still get the nice side.

4/10

Oiro EDP by Mona di Orio

Year: 2006
Nose: Mona di Orio

Powerful, deep, slap-in-the-head opening of jasmin, heliotrope and immortelle on aromatic cedar woods – rich, carnal and daring, a bit morbid and overhelming with a hint of mind-blowing decadent mess, but that is how "power" scents work. BayKAT's review on Basenotes correctly refers to L'Heure Bleue - different components, but that's the kind of feel. I smell a sort of weird, balsamic-camphor base which somehow amplifies and surrounds this – making the texture almost resemble to the dense power of tuberose-based scents, to which this one in fact smells alike. Perfectly-balanced citrus notes (thank God) refresh the texture. As minutes pass it progressively becomes more and more mellow and sweet, settling down a quite natural powdery floral fragrance, still with a disturbing kind of cloying/rancid note with a weird resinous note floating over like a zombie crow, and an ambery/frankincense subtle base. I frankly can not like this completely, or better say, I am still unsure about when/how to wear this - bold, rich, complex, somptuous, viscious carnal flowers, still with nothing leathery/animalic to provide a darker counterpart: challenging for sure.

8/10