AlterHerr

A strange summer passes by. Pandemics and climate change have turned travel into an increasingly ambivalent experience, and the grandchildren's ever-present finger of caution urges us to refrain. And damn it - they're right.

My biographical carbon footprint is shameful.

Then came the water. Yes, I live in a flood zone, and on my own I would have had a hard time emptying the full basement. Thanks to the young helpers.

I can't get on with everyday life, even if I still got off comparatively lightly. Relatives, friends, neighbors and acquaintances are often more affected. Many a person who was privileged yesterday is now living in a friend's spare room. At over 70, the thought of a new beginning is not easy. And yet many - including those of my generation - feel the need for a break.

It washed away the car anyway, so I won't be buying a new one in the first place.
I wasn't planning on ending up as one of those pensioners who, in erroneous reverse, intend to turn the local marketplace into a drive-in anyway.

And it is only in the moment of destruction that I sense I have remained blind to the lush beauty of my home for too long. What glorious nooks and crannies are not here?
Memories of wonderful and memorable moments of my life....

Now this is not a senior forum, but a fragrance forum, and the present Gucci fragrance is called consequently also not memory of the prom, but Mémoire d'une Odeur.
No less he is also able.

It reminds me of when I was a rascal, roaming the woods of my homeland in shorts with my friends. Always looking for adventures or material to build dams. The wet leaves, the soft ground, rain, mosses, a snail, an earthworm, a stream meandering gently down a slope, sunbeams flashing furtively through the trees, the rust on an old metal barrel - even the inorganic seemed organic in such surroundings.

I smell more than a tea, rather I perceive the chamomiles as wildflowers on the edge of the dirt road, along with the earth surrounding them.

This eau de parfum is the antithesis of the Instagram age. Not loud, colorful and gaudy.
Instead, tart yet familiar. No synthetic gourmand, which tries to please everyone with sticky sweetness. And that's what makes it so authentic.
His fragrances depict the nuances and facets of life far more aptly than those awful cinnamon pudding bombs. I honestly would have hardly trusted Gucci in particular to make such an anti-mainstream statement.

Incidentally, Mémoire d'une Odeur comes up with the - at least for me personally - now visually most aesthetic bottle in my collection. A fragrance can hardly dress more elegantly.
I can hardly wait for the beginning of autumn. I want to slip into my shoes, and jump into puddles. Want to hear the dirt slinging against my pants. Want to lean down, and once again admire an ant at its busy work for minutes on end.

All the goodness was so close all along. Thank you Señor Morillas for reminding me...

Disclaimer: I am an older gentleman of advanced retirement age who has applied fragrances for personal pleasure all his life. I have neither an analytical nose and professional background knowledge, nor the urge to remain as objective as possible in evaluations, as far as this seems at all possible with fragrances.

When Axe Dark Temptation came on the market, I myself had long since reached an age in which I was far more enthusiastic about good food, than for new acquaintances. Besides, I had found the great love and really the best woman in the world long ago, and unfortunately had to mourn her far too soon. Due to this fact, I shopped for my first Axe product more in the prospect of its cocoa-like profile than in terms of the idea of bouncing around downtown like a rock star.

Still, my then-grown sons had to grin when they spied the relevant merchandise in my bathroom during a visit. "UUh, Dad's hitting the town...," they commiserated. Yes - the Axe effect was on everyone's lips at the time thanks to the omnipresent adverts, although the chauvinism celebrated there honestly also just seems ridiculous in retrospect.

Now the dark Axe products have me aromatechnisch not really deeply disappointed, but the durability of the fragrance was naturally rather low.
The blind purchase of S.T. Dupont Noir was able to surprise me all the more positively.

The somewhat undifferentiated-dubious top note can be safely passed over, since it evaporates anyway very quickly, but should mention all the more the successful subsequent composition, in which I truly develop the feeling to wrap my "I" with a delicate touch of nougat chocolate.

Cloves and hazelnut seem anything but synthetic in the dryout, and actually manage to fix a cocoa-like aroma profile on the skin. I speak here, of course, not of a sugary sweet amber oud bomb from the high-price segment, but just when the latter are a little annoying due to the weather or weariness, then you will find a more than pleasant, light alternative with S.T. Duponts Noir.

Especially in the warm summer months, in which the favorite chocolate varieties of the delicatessen are not delivered, one misses them all the more passionately, heavy fragrances too much wear, but you feel no desire at all for something citrus-aquatic, the hour of Noir strikes.

My recipe:
A long shower with Dark Temptation shower gel, then some skincare with the Chocolat
Hand & Body Lotion by Bettina Barty (yes - I know dear cosmetics professionals that you should really only use ph neutral soap in the summer), and then fix the cocoa profile with S.T. Dupont Noir.
If you then still crown the whole thing with an appropriate breakfast (cough...Esze...- yes - grandfathers can also be child heads), then the day can only succeed.

The glossy black, monolithic bottle is particularly well done in this product, by the way, which was the real reason for my blind purchase at the time, and the more than silly low price comes as icing on the cake.

Bon appetite...

Disclaimer: I am an older gentleman of advanced retirement age who has applied fragrances for personal pleasure all his life. I have neither an analytical nose and professional background knowledge, nor the urge to remain as objective as possible in evaluations, as far as this seems at all possible with fragrances.

Some things in life should be encountered at the first time preferably blind, so as not to cloud your own judgment a priori by personal resentments.
On the table in front of me is a bottle of 1964 Château Margaux - a spontaneous purchase from a wine auction - and truly no special Bordeaux vintage. No 1945 or 61, and only not the legendary Margaux from the year 1900. Hadn't I already read several times that in particular the 64 is supposed to seem completely untypical Margaux?
And yet the great name remains...
On the other hand, Margaux reds in particular can develop surprisingly well, but it was too late for a blind tasting now anyway.

In other words, I was once again on the verge of pouring a veritable dose of "neurosis" in my old Moser glass. Actually, an objective assessment seemed beyond my grasp.

It's a similar story with good fragrances. If name and reputation are big enough, and far ahead, then the own expectation completely clouds any senses - which is even more valid with a higher price tag.
Disappointment and enthusiasm then usually play music in similarly rapturous realms.

Clarity, however, is gained by returning. If one returns again and again to an object of desire, then it really belongs to one. Xerjoff's Alexandria II has become such a creature for me in recent years. Its powdery sweetness comes across as anything but burdensomely heavy. Rather, it wraps the wearer in a warm cashmere blanket under which all the problems of the world seem forgotten. Xerjoff has really succeeded in transporting well-being into a bottle. If no time for a wellness day remains, or gray clouds press on the mind, then a spray is enough to smile again.

Yet Alexandria II feels familiar from day one.

I would find it idle with this fragrance to philosophize about the individual ingredients.
Each individual is undoubtedly of high quality, but more important is their interaction as a whole composition.
Yes, you can perceive the rose in the heart note, but it blends just so subtly into the amber vanilla Nirvana that any comparison with a usual flower bouquet must seem completely out of place. Like the individual instruments of a good orchestra, the ingredients play together harmoniously perfect.

Equally unfair would seem the comparison with an average designer fragrance.
They are simply different worlds.
Power, sillage, durability, expression, sensory appeal play here in a completely different dimension.
The fragrance itself becomes the protagonist. And yes - you can indeed smell the price tag.

Furthermore, you can not point out often enough that of such a fragrance a single spray is enough, while you have to respray some designer several times a day vigorously, because its durability and sillage mock any description. This relativizes the higher acquisition costs immensely.

In particular, you get with Xerjoffs Alexandria II but undoubtedly a perfume with which you can present themselves regardless of their own gender without shame at any evening gala event. It is a masterpiece of perfumers art, which I may recommend regardless of my introductory words unreservedly.

Personally, I prefer the Xerjoff Discovery Set III since its release, because in addition to Alexandria II with Naxos and Golden Dallah two other favorite fragrances from the same house are included.

Finally, I would like to mention the beauty of the Xerjoff flacons may. The sparkle of the golden caps works namely similarly enchanting as the content, and provides a real eye catcher in your own bathroom or dressing room.

Xerjoff's Alexandria II has become a part of my life, which I would only reluctantly miss, which I can not say of the aforementioned 1964 Margaux truly..

Disclaimer: I am an older gentleman of advanced retirement age who has applied fragrances for personal pleasure all his life. I have neither an analytical nose and professional background knowledge, nor the urge to remain as objective as possible in evaluations, as far as this seems at all possible with fragrances.

When the first days of August have passed, then you sit sometimes at the evening garden table, enjoy a glass of Portuguese red wine, and you remember.
Läßt the summer review, takes stock of whether one would have used his short earth time in the past weeks well behaved and sensible, and do not even notice how the view is drawn gently into a dark corner of the garden, which but not at all gloomy, but rather auspicious.
There at the very end, still behind the vegetable beds and herbs grow on an old fence - probably for over a hundred years - the tastiest blackberries on earth.
And then you get up, walk there thoughtfully, smell them, and look forward to the small harvest of the weeks now to come.

In my eyes, few scents capture the garden theme as beautifully as Versace's The Dreamer.
Its fruity sweetness is of such delicate loveliness that it blends almost creatively wildly with the herbal aromas. I deliberately do not want to track down individual fragrance notes in this eau de toilette, but let the whole garden work on me.

Not one of those ghastly concrete gardens with DIY pot plants in antique design pots, and also not a durchdesignten swank garden with Koikarpfenteich and wooden bridge - no, I'm talking about a real garden as you find it with grandparents, where hundreds of colours and smells rain down on a small person, with cherry and apple trees, where cucumbers grow, the brown-yellow leaves of the trees cover the lawn, and old wooden slats rot on the bank of a small village stream.

Possibly this image is as cheesy as this fragrance, possibly because the present has become too hectic to allow such gardens with all their back-breaking work to survive at all, possibly because of this we sometimes react cynically to this form of niceness, and possibly because of this very reason I love Versace's The Dreamer all the more.

That this fragrance seduces incidentally with one of the most tasteful bottles on the market and a very attractive price, this should be mentioned, without the beauty of the actual fragrance but even in the slightest want to relativize

...or else how I developed the feeling that I'd fallen into the clutches of a grandson scam artist.

Disclaimer: I am an older gentleman of advanced retirement age who has applied fragrances all his life for personal pleasure. I do not have an analytical nose and professional background knowledge, nor the urge to remain as objective as possible in reviews, as far as this seems at all possible with fragrances.

The person does not become unemployed as a pensioner. Rather, he must in addition to all actions to be performed just those before also still independently search, find and invent if necessary, without thereby for God's sake not to torpedo the strictly structured and planned routines of the younger and neater busier generations.

And because Pandemie and Lockdown react completely unsympathetic to the hourglass of my life, I have now just for the first time THE Crowdpleaser par excellence, namely the infamous Dior Sauvage Edt. acquired as a blind buy, in order to get to the bottom of the secret of its global success quite personally, whereby the depth of this lake - as should crystallize quickly - in all its simplicity would rather be counted to the non-swimmer area.

The actual foundation of the fragrance here is a very round, creamy and pleasing sweetness, which we were allowed to get to know in a similar form already with other hyped fragrances,
eg with Jean Paul Gaultier's Le Mâle or JS Sun Men .
François Demachy and his team hide but this sweet bouquet refined thorny-like in the midst of a rude hedge of tart-bitter woods and a very subtle patchouli modrigkeit (almost in the way a bartender would sink a shot of Noilly Prat Vermouth in the sweet Strawberry cocktail), which should give the fragrance not only a greater sophistication, but also make it ready for the fragrance market of the post-nineties.

That Sauvage is a wholly pleasing fragrance is not at all in the slightest doubt, and I can certainly understand why legions of young ladies obsessively rub the perfumed crumpled (and accidentally forgotten) shirts of their current sweethearts over their own faces.

My own enthusiasm, however, is a little more muted. During the evening walk, I feel caught in the paranoid thought that a random stranger coming towards me because of this already a little greasy chavvy synthetic core sweetness could tacitly accuse me of a pathological form of opportunism, which would be due not only to the notoriety of this Eau de toilettes, but also the little subtle construction.

I feel in this regard again and again small waves of shame rising in me, must nevertheless confess at this point that I would still sniff my wrist many times this evening, and feel like the victim of a grandchild trick. I know the method, understand the procedure, imagine that such a thing would never happen to me, and yet fall into the trap ......

.....although a sweet one, in which one's own grandchildren pull away an empty wallet by a rip cord as soon as one bends over for it as a grandfather.

A recommendation to pronounce is superfluous at this point, since an encounter with this fragrance for each Parfumaficionado must inevitably seem as inevitable as their own death.
And therefore I spare myself to describe the aesthetics of the flacon as only mediocre, because other and cheaper designer fragrances in this area perform far more, such a consideration would have to seem as meaningful as the aesthetic evaluation of their own grave urn.

In this sense
Memento mori