West Side Bond No. 9 2006

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7.1 / 10 134 Ratings

West Side is a perfume by Bond No. 9 for women and men and was released in 2006. The scent is floral-sweet. It is still in production.
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Main accords

Floral

Sweet

Powdery

Gourmand

Woody

Fragrance Pyramid

Top Notes

Peony

Rose

Ylang-ylang

Heart Notes

Amber

Sandalwood

Base Notes

Vanilla

Musk

Perfumer

Michel Almairac

Ratings

Scent

7.1134 Ratings

Longevity

7.8108 Ratings

Sillage

7.0107 Ratings

Bottle

7.2112 Ratings

Value for money

5.415 Ratings

Submitted by DonVanVliet, last update on 15.01.2024.

Reviews

6 in-depth fragrance descriptions

09/04/2019

10
Bottle 10
Sillage 10
Longevity 10
Scent

AgnesEva
34 Reviews

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AgnesEva

Less helpful Review 8

Roses floating in wine...

What a perfume... A very unique, boozy, narcotic, erotic, woody and powdery rose... It opens with roses swimming in red wine, then you get a rose-vanilla liqueur with some clean freshness from the peony and the drydown is a sweet, buttery sandalwood-musk-amber-rose. I have never smelled such a rose before and I'm happy I have this in my collection. I know many men who wouldn't wear a fragrance which has rose as the main note but this one I can absolutely recommend for a confident, modern and adventurous guy. Try it! :)

02/20/2012

7.5
Sillage 7.5
Longevity 8
Scent

Missk
1165 Reviews

Missk

Top Review 4

Deliciously spicy rose

I was introduced to this fragrance by a rather good-looking male sales assistant. He wasn't trying to sell it to me, he was just so very eager to show me what he personally wore.

West Side struck me almost immediately as being rather strong, feminine in some ways with a note that resembled that raisin-type smell of tobacco. The scent when summed up in my own words, is tobacco-rose.

This fragrance has a lovely richness to it, that does make it extremely wearable for both sexes. There is a definite sweetness in there somewhere, perhaps even a gourmand touch, yet not too sugary.

This fragrance is very Wintery and warm, I couldn't possibly imagine anyone wearing it during the hotter months. The very alluring sales assistant informed me that he wore this fragrance whenever he went out, where many often asked what perfume he was wearing. It was not always a definite crowd-pleaser however it always had people intrigued.

Despite the array of floral notes, which do seem rather feminine when observed in its scent pyramid, West Side is very bold and very different. The drydown has a very likable carmelised quality, rich and syrupy.

Unfortunately this fragrance is not very long lasting, which was a shame because its sillage seemed to suggest otherwise.

06/18/2014

jtd
484 Reviews

jtd

Very helpful Review 7

perfumer with rosy track record

I know a couple of Michel Almairac’s roses. Voleur de Rose for l’Artisan Parfumeur and the inexpensive but spectacular Cabaret for Grès. Voleur is a beautifully simple-to-wear patchouli rose with and earthy/fruity bent. Cabaret is a long-lasting musky rose/incense and one of the best perfumes available for about 25 bucks. Clearly, the perfumer knows his way around a rose garden.

If you like West Side, it is a richer, more complex perfume than either of the above two. If you’re not fond of it, it’s just more complicated. West Side doesn’t have the transparency of Cabaret or the succinctness of Voleur, but it is a well considered take on the gourmand-floral. West Side is built on a woody rose/vanilla core that gets pulled this way and that by a number of modifiers, making it a difficult perfume to categorize. Peony pulls the rose in a loud, frazzled direction. A sweet milkiness, I assume a sandalwood analogue, pulls the rose in a woody/creamy direction. Vanilla takes the rose toward the gourmand, but it’s not a Willy Wonka over-the-top dessert frenzy. It smells a bit like a rich, creamy porridge with rosewater. If the ‘neither/nor’ thing bothers you, West Side might not be your cup of tea. But if you like the idea of a perfume that presents a different face to different perspectives, give it a go.

West side isn’t my bag, but I can dig it, baby. It’s nicely composed, it wears very well over time and has an unhurried, zaftig sensibility. It’s dense and cozy, more a ‘come hither’ fragrance than a sillage monster.

from scenthurdle.com

05/16/2014

5
Sillage 5
Longevity 8
Scent

Jbells
46 Reviews

Jbells

Very helpful Review 5

A little boozy, a little rosy, a little sweet

I was sent a decant of this, and truthfully, I was not eager to try this. In the decant, the sandalwood and musk seemed to almost overpower the rose, which I didn't enjoy.

I finally sprayed it on, immediately noticing that it had decent sillage. I got rose at once, but also with that sandalwood, so I decided to let it do its thing and ignore it.

About 10 minutes later, I unexpectedly picked up this massive whiff of a slightly sweet, yummy rose. Not in-your-face sweet, though. This is a little honey-sweet. With vanilla. Yums.

After about an hour, it calms down slightly into a gentle, but still vibrant, rose mixed with mostly sandalwood, backed by musk, amber, and some vanilla. It comes across as trying to be creamy, but never really gets there. It also has a more masculine, boozy vibe, which could be nice, depending on your preference.

5 hours in, and West Side becomes rather muted. It no longer envelopes me, but I can catch whiffs of what is now a deeper scent, that seemed a bit more vanilla cake-like. I would say it fades completely after 6 hours on me.

As stated above, sillage was good. I sprayed once in the hollow of my neck, and once just above each elbow bend, and for the most part, it felt like I was constantly enveloped in it.

I mostly like this, but I think the decant that I have is more than enough for me. I'm not too partial to wearing a scent which, on me, leans on the masculine side. It is still a lovely, lovely perfume though.

03/28/2012

10
Bottle 7.5
Sillage 10
Longevity 7
Scent

Sherapop
1239 Reviews

Sherapop

Very helpful Review 3

More Philip Glass Than Jazz

Wending one's way through the ever-expanding world of Bond no 9 is no mean feat. No matter how many reviews I write, I find that still more lie ahead. And then some of their wares just take some time to wrap one's nose around, a case in point being WEST SIDE.

WEST SIDE opens with an evanescent cinnaminty freshness which, as I far as I can tell, no one but me has detected. For about one minute, this perfume reminds me very much of Dentyne (or is it Trident?) chewing gum. From there, the roses descend, not petal by petal, but by the truckload. The roses are suspended in amber, which abides through to the drydown, making this to some an amber rose perfume. I've seen comparisons to TOCADE, but I think that WEST SIDE is distinct, and while I very much appreciate the former, I'm not sure yet--even after multiple testings--about the latter.

I think that I do not understand WEST SIDE. For one thing, it does not remind me of music at all, since aside from the surprising and mildly discordant Dentyne opening--perhaps designed to mimic the experience of popping a tic-tac in one's mouth at the opening of an opera?--I don't experience a lot of development, much less lyric undulation. WEST SIDE is just sweet roses and amber to me. So what would the musical analogue be? Philip Glass?

As an irrelevant aside, I wish that they had used a less orangey red for this bottle. I feel that there is a clash of the reds between the roses and the vessel in which they are presented. I will say that the staying power of this edp is quite good, as evidenced by the fact that even after a few wearings, my purse spray is still nearly full!

----

Update: I ended up acquiring a bottle of this perfume, because after trying lots of other roses, I realized that it really is unique. There is definitely a je ne sais quoi spiciness which I missed in my early testing of this creation--Miss K is right! (-;

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