Asian Inspirations 2013

Asian Inspirations by The Merchant Of Venice
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7.7 / 10 249 Ratings
Asian Inspirations is a popular perfume by The Merchant Of Venice for women and men and was released in 2013. The scent is spicy-green. It was last marketed by Mavive.
Pronunciation
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Main accords

Spicy
Green
Woody
Fresh
Resinous

Fragrance Pyramid

Top Notes Top Notes
CardamomCardamom BergamotBergamot Bitter orangeBitter orange
Heart Notes Heart Notes
Black pepperBlack pepper Clary sageClary sage NutmegNutmeg SaffronSaffron OudOud
Base Notes Base Notes
Benzoin SiamBenzoin Siam Java vetiverJava vetiver MuskMusk White cedarWhite cedar LeatherLeather
Ratings
Scent
7.7249 Ratings
Longevity
7.3216 Ratings
Sillage
6.8214 Ratings
Bottle
8.6211 Ratings
Value for money
7.158 Ratings
Submitted by Puck1, last update on 27.03.2024.

Reviews

8 in-depth fragrance descriptions
9
Bottle
6
Sillage
6
Longevity
9.5
Scent
Kovex

15 Reviews
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Kovex
Kovex
Top Review 37  
Harmony
Whether my early childhood passion for everything Japanese or the marketing department of The Merchant Of Venice evoke my associations cannot be said with certainty. In any case, for me Asian Inspirations embodies the essence of Japanese culture like no other fragrance.

The basis for the strong need of the Japanese for harmony was already laid in Japan's first constitution in 604 AD. It was a kind of law, which also regulated many questions of manners and courtesy to create harmony. It was also the time when Buddhism reached Japan and, together with the influences of Taoism and Confucianism, led to a syncretic and harmonious coexistence with the ancient Japanese religion Shinto. The goal always remained the same: Harmony

The pursuit of this harmony is evident in many areas of public life. If you want to fathom the less public life of the Japanese with all its rituals, polite phrases and etiquette in an original way, you have to go to the mountainous hinterland of Japan.

Asian Inspirations takes me on a journey to traditional Japan, far away from the big cities. A narrow road leads along a hilly road between countless small densely overgrown mountains. From time to time the vaulted, golden roof of a temple flashes out of the dark green overshadowed slopes. Countless water landscapes. The teahouse nearby is deliberately kept very simple to give its guests the opportunity for inner contemplation. The air has now become clearer and more humid. The splashing of water is omnipresent, yet there is a soothing, almost inert silence in the air.

Asian Inspirations starts off with an extraordinary green-spicy freshness that immediately reminds me of clear mountain water that, on its narrow path through the densely overgrown banks lined with mosses and herbs, runs crystal clear into a pond of koi carp.

While a delicate carpet made of the finest suede leather is the basis for the fragrance quite early on, the other spices, herbs, woods and resins do not even try to fight for supremacy. Vetiver also subordinates itself, although it serves as an unsweet, stable framework next to the flanking woods, to which deep green spices and rounding mild resins are added.

Everything merges into a perfect symbiosis that radiates calm and serenity but also a quiet authority.

Asian Inspirations is a rather soft fragrance with moderate sillage and medium shelf life. But here I find these characteristics perfectly balanced and in harmony with the fragrance. After 4-5 hours he has withdrawn very closely and leaves behind a delicate melange that has something gently meditative about it.
Since the scent has neither flowery nor sweet parts in it I see it almost more on the men's side against my previous commentator, although the statistics (see right) speak against me ;)

The concept of being in perfect harmony with nature, of allowing peace to return and of finding one's way to oneself seems to me to have been excellently implemented here. A concept that should work even better in today's hectic and fast-paced world. It does for me.
19 Comments
10
Bottle
7
Sillage
10
Longevity
9
Scent
Duftsucht

105 Reviews
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Duftsucht
Duftsucht
Top Review 30  
It triggers only one inspiration, and that is certainly not Asian!

...but a very profane one. Within a few hours I feel inspired to look for the cheapest offer at the moment and to give myself a little Flakönchen!
Funnily enough, I already tested Asian Inspirations on our Venice holiday half a year ago: at 28 degrees in the shade and with La Fenice on the other arm, who swallowed me with a huge cloud of powder, he unfortunately didn't come home with me at that time. By a sample of a dear Profuma he took the day before yesterday and yesterday again on my skin place - and is now hopefully already on the direct way into my drawer!

Asian Inspirations starts with a surge of spicy green. It smells a bit like when I grate the many different ingredients for the pie spice in a mortar at Christmas: nutmeg, cardamom, juniper berry, laurel, sage leaves, peppercorns, freshly grated orange zest and many more combine to a spicy-warm fragrance cloud and give the game pie, which I only make once a year on Christmas Eve, this wonderful taste. However, the beginning of Asian Inspirations is not dry and dusty like the end product of my long handling with the pestle, but ethereally green. And although it doesn't smell a bit aquatic, it is a moist, fresh green washed with spring water.
Vetiver - the component in the pyramid that has real addictive potential for me at the moment - quickly becomes noticeable under the spice. Together with the benzoin it creates a creamy-powdery, almost vanilla feeling. It's difficult to explain: It does not smell of vanilla, but it is a delicate spicy sweetness that is increasingly gaining the upper hand.
Asian Inspirations is - except at the very beginning - not an exciting, demanding fragrance for me, but a very relaxed companion. And that for hours. Applied in the morning, I am not even tempted to spray until 18.00 o'clock!

For me it is the ideal fragrance for well-being at the moment, alternating from autumn to winter. But I can imagine that the scent smells a bit too much like a kitchen spice rack for some noses.

What I really can't understand are the remarks of other testers, who smell profit maximization with just this smell of the "merchant of Venice". With the best will in the world, I can't imagine that this rather idiosyncratic spice-heavy creation, which is probably too powdery-sweet for many men in the base, but too spicy-vetiver for just as many women, was created with the intention of becoming a mainstream box-office hit.
9 Comments
7
Sillage
9
Longevity
7.5
Scent
FvSpee

249 Reviews
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FvSpee
FvSpee
Top Review 22  
Side notes
As far as I remember, this was my first contact with the much-praised Italian fragrance house "Der Kaufmann von Venedig", and the result was ambivalent. I like the fragrance quite well and it deserves a high rating in the "originality" category; I found it very unusual. Unfortunately, he couldn't get me around: He doesn't breathe history, picture, mood, memory into me, so he doesn't inspire me (for which I don't blame the scent, that may be my fault), and therefore he stays with me in the category "Nice to have tested". Normally in such cases I don't write a comment, in this case I make an exception for the sake of some marginal remarks, which may be useful for one or the other:

1. Strong cardamom

I am surprised that so far no reviewer has highlighted the cardamom note. My first test took place without a previous look into the fragrance pyramid; and I saw myself from second 1 in a radiant cardamom cloud. I like the fresh, ethereal-oily smell of freshly pounded cardamom seeds very much, and that, not combined with warm, dense, creamy or full-bodied notes like as a coffee or gingerbread spice, but as it were free-floating, bright, fluid, like in a solvent (of course it doesn't smell like solvent now, it's just a picture!) is what I encounter here very early and very dominantly. This bright, fluid impression is probably due to the citric notes, which I do not perceive separately as such.

2. Good Vetiver

About 80% of all fragrances with a halfway strong vetiver content repel me or at least don't please me. This one is supposed to have a strong vetiver portion in the base note and has nothing that irritates or repels me in any way. It may therefore be a scent for people who also use vetiver, but want to get closer to this aroma.

3. Beautiful Benzoe

The benzoin, in congenial interaction with the cardamom (and the pepper and remaining spice tuttifrutti), does what I like it so much for in fragrances: to beautifully caress out the whole olfactory and respiratory apparatus without becoming aggressive. All this is padded with balsamic cream so that it does not come across as violent.

4. Enormous durability

Asian Inspirations can still be felt very clearly (albeit very closely) after 14 hours. On another day it was still perceptible with me after 6 hours plus thorough washing. So be careful!

5. Scorpion fish and snaketails

The observation of Taurus1967 that this is a "head note scent" hits the nail on the head. It is not a top note blender, see previous point, but the top note is special. Here it sprays, sparks and shimmers, here everything is very dynamic and very special. In the endless middle and late stages it's still nice, but not too linear (which is not a bad thing!), but maybe a little conventional warm-spicy-woody.

6. No green, no Asia

Others have already noticed that the fragrance is not now the associative Asian bringer (even though I think it's nice that he was able to conjure a sympathetic camel into the head cinema in the Mongolian steppe at Augusto), but it didn't seem to me to be green, even though I'm conspicuous here as a perceptive ghost driver. Maybe the effect of the green bottle?

I'll stay curious about the brand, anyway!
13 Comments
9
Bottle
4
Scent
DasguteLeben

21 Reviews
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DasguteLeben
DasguteLeben
17  
Better living through chemistry
Better living naturally refers to entrepreneurs who earn a golden nose with it. The Vidal family, owners of Mavive, have become wealthy thanks to Pino Silvestre - the Italian "Tabac Original", a distinctive mass-market fragrance. In addition, the company produces all kinds of fragrances and products at drugstore level and develops unsuccessful perfume lines for fashion brands that, at least internationally, lose themselves in nothing, a little Replay or Pal Zileri. Well, and they thought to themselves sometime: Niche - so pack our stuff into fancy bottles, add a nice story and then take € 100 instead of € 12,50 - we can still do that, wa (is Venetian dialect). And since you reside in the lagoon city, nothing is closer than Murano-like flacons, a replica of Santa Maria Novella Florence as a retail shop and - the most important in the non-industry - two dozen fragrances in no time from the ground stomp. The result is something like Asian Inspirations, which is neither inspiring nor Asian, but classic aroma chemistry from the drawing board - sorry, today it's an algorithm - with a teeny teeny tiny budget and a high price. Souvenir of Venice, running. I smell primarily powder, pepper and green herb notes (probably none of them of course, except the vetiver derivative) quite linear and rather from the bottom drawer - to be honest Mavive can't do anything other than cheap, I'm afraid, that's just burned into the companies DNA. But it lasts a long time, the stuff has to be good, and is diffuse enough that you can project on it what it should be - Thai Curry for example. That this one is 75:25 in women's hands surprises me a little - hard pepper, zero floral, no sweetness. Is it the powder or the more feminine flacon aesthetic? For me, the businessman from Venice is certainly part of the business sector, which tends to spoil my desire for perfume, so I'll probably stick with this attempt.
14 Comments
9
Bottle
7
Sillage
8
Longevity
8.5
Scent
Augusto

164 Reviews
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Augusto
Augusto
Top Review 13  
The green scent of Asia
Reduced to the essentials - the green scent! But that wouldn't have really sounded, said the marketing department, and would have been a strange announcement, zero inspiration in the title, more like an organic food store or a barrel. But it is THE green scent right away and with the first spraying on. So it starts and AugustA stands immediately in the middle of the green.
Start: Galbanum, green tea, green mint. A little spicy, the green. Woody, woody, grassy herb weaves an open green landscape.

I was so excited about the heart note, whether they exaggerated with the usual oud bitterness that doesn't work on my skin at all or would the heart note that sounds so fabulously different convince? It remains the impression of the green landscape, is it a Chinese garden or Mongolian steppe? I'm moving on.

Asia is large and diverse. Others before me have already described this in a great way and from different perspectives. So I don't have to try that anymore. I'm sticking to describing what makes the fragrance so impressive to me: no flashy Asian exoticism here, but harmonious and complex in-one fusion of everything you could imagine under green. I'm sure the bottle prejudged me
I continue my walk through the scent room, through the vastness of these green areas, through the city and the country.
On the right I pass, I don't walk an hour, a restaurant - a steaming bowl of miso soup is put down, spicy, pleasant. And green tea. The tranquillity and thoughtful, harmonious, apparent simplicity that Asian food can bring.
I'm going on. In the surroundings it is woody, spicy, green.
I don't smell anything floral, and it's always a measured walk outdoors. The gaze does not rest on the ornament of any garden flowers, but on the expansive, wonderfully artfully cut cedar with its play of light between foreground and background, which the branches reveal depending on the angle of view. I breathe the freshness of air, water, grasses and herbs.
Now I recognize the wonderfully embedded Vetiver quite clearly. How beautifully the nutty character of this sweet grass harmonises with the green spice without ever becoming heavy or too cool. Huge tufts of beautiful sweet grass rustle in the wind.

Asian Inspirations can be understood here as a painter who brings Asian moments into the picture while retaining his own artistic imagination. I soon notice that my wandering takes place within such a picture.
Temple gardens fit well here, not as an image, but as inspiration. You can recognize them in their scent, but they're not the scent. This is good because it releases the fragrance to become one with the wearer.

Although no flowers, but most aromatic green, wood and balsam, resins, spices etc., the smell is by the way completely unisex, even more, it is completely independent opposite classifications.
I think it goes all year round, even if it's not the typical summer scent and certainly not the typical winter scent. This green mood would always prevail.
Here, too: No assignment, no definition. Nature? Despite the clearly perceptible earth and plant references too abstract. This at least partially removes the fragrance from the usual (green) concepts. At the same time he has something Impressionist, no more Romantic, at least not too Modernist despite the abstraction.

Colour? Yes, clearly green, but iridescent. I wouldn't be surprised if somebody saw it differently. But the bottle already fits and is not just a pretty glass art play by MoV. Chinese vase in forest green I would let go smoothly. Right at the bottom of the picture, just passed it: A shop with Chinese handicrafts. Or was it Italian?

The spicy character, somewhat bitter citrusiness and leather-nut-vetiver remain and always re-combine. The fragrance completes itself perceptibly, condenses without becoming difficult. I'm all there, running a bit inappropriately into the middle of the picture with my nose up and smelling a change. But it seems to remain that way for the time being. I don't dislike this, the mixture is balanced and convincing, and after about two hours a balsamic softness is added, which appears velvety. Granted: Asia wouldn't have to do it if it didn't say. So here again, no definition, only inspiration. I'm very comfortable with that. Stay: THE GREEN Scent.
Since I like the green tone remaining in the base and finally fading very much, I intend to repeat the walk through the green often.

In the distance, a gentle Mongolian camel passes by. Unsaddled, chewing weed
3 Comments
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Statements

1 short view on the fragrance
BertolucciKBertolucciK 1 year ago
9
Bottle
7
Sillage
7
Longevity
8.5
Scent
Aromatic, green, spicy and slightly smoky. Bitter orange in the opening, clary sage with cardamom and nutmeg. Vetiver, cedar and benzoin.
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