04/17/2015

ColinM
516 Reviews

ColinM
Helpful Review
3
Rich minimalism
Serpentine opens with an unexpectedly vibrant and realistic lime-green accord with a slight creamy note underneath, and also a really subtle candied feel that reminds me of elemi, and something bitter-green that resembles to lentiscus. Hyper-clean and minimal and with a contrasting soapy-powdery aftertaste providing a cozy “freshly ironed shirt” effect, and a light woody base, yet not that synthetic or abstract; the greenness is restrained and thin, but it’s sharp and natural in its own transparent way, at least at the opening stage. This thin texture is what fascinates me for the first couple of hours: the scent is vibrant and “alive”, and the sillage is solid (probably thanks to aldehydes too), but at the same time it’s incredibly subtle and faint. I don’t know how they did that, but as much contradictory as it may sound, Serpentine smells rich and minimalist at the same time, and as I said, not that synthetic as one may expect. After one hour or so, on my skin Serpentine gets warmer, more “greyish”, always clean and soapy-green but with a sort of more abstract feel, as if the initial greenness slowly faded away bringing Serpentine on a more and more “lunar” field, depersonalizing the scent until it reaches an enjoyable stage of pure grey-musky cleanness, almost mineral or concrete-like, with just a subtle, foggy pink-grey breeze of anodyne powdery-soapy notes. It’s like watching a timelapse video of a natural landscape becoming more and more deserted. And that is the drydown for quite long, which after a while, once this brilliant transition ends, gets honestly a bit boring – I get the pleasure of “grey-clean-soapy” notes, just not for that long. Apart from this, which is just my taste, I personally consider Serpentine a clever, interesting, versatile, pleasant and truly “contemporary” scent surely worth a try (not sure about the purchase, as it's a bit costly).
7,5-8/10
7,5-8/10