CigiScent

This is the fragrance that was the biggest surprise to me from all the fragrances I have smelled. I ordered Hactivat at a store, but due to Covid, I had to wait a looooong time for it to arrive. To compensate, they offered to give a small bottle from a fragrance of Farmacia Annunziata. I did not know the house, but I researched it well and since my Hacivat would arrive to late for summer and fall was approaching, I wanted a good fall scent. After researching the house thoroughly I went for Ambra Nera and I have not regretted it. I was lucky and in stead of giving my a small bottle, they gave me a big one.

This is such a beautiful amber scent. It is so high quality and the house is really underrated. It is warm en enveloping, perfect for after a cold fall or winter walk. Strong enough to wear outdoors in fall or not too cold winter temperatures. It is a lot more subtle then some of the power houses of the modern popular sweet scents. When I read the note breakdown I was kind of afraid what the cypress and eucalyptus would give. I thought it might give a strange contrast with the warmth of the amber and Vanilla, but this is definitely not the case. It is warm and comforting scent, but the eucalyptus and and cypress keep it perfectly balanced. The scent does not feel green or fresh to me, the green notes give the scent a classy balance, where a lot of contemporary scents go way to sweet for my taste.

Not saying this smells old in any way. It is very much a contemporary scent. It is different enough to be an original, but palatable to be worn everyday.

The longevity is perfect, it stays with you the whole day long. The projection and sillage is more than ok for my. It does not kill small rodents, but that is not what I look for in a scent. It's a long lasting cosy scent bubble.

Very warmly recommended! I can't wait to check out the rest of the underrated house!

As so many have stated. This is not a clone of any fragrance. This is a fragrance that stands on it's own. It is very fruity, woody, leathery to me.

This was not a love at first sniff, in the beginning I did not even like it. It was to aggressive to me, which is very strange because I saw so many reviews stating it was a safe blind buy, everyone loved it, it was so smooth. Well, no to me. There is something really masculine in this fragrance. I guess it is the leather note.

You know the note breakdown. It is a warm fragrance thanks to the vanilla and woods. I have a 2018 batch and the performance is really good. It took however three months to open up. In the beginning it was rather shy, but now it performs really well. It does not fill up large rooms, but has a nice sillage and very good longevity. I can smell it on my skin after 24 hours.

I would not recommend this is a blind buy, but I would never recommend any fragrance as a blind buy. If this fragrance is at a discount it is worth it's money. It does smell quite synthetic to me, but it smells nice. At full retail, the price is kind of steep. It is a real mancera, so performance is high, but there is not a lot of subtlety or elegance to this fragrance.

I recommend not to spray it anywhere near you nose, because I get OF very easy. One spray on each wrist is ideal to me for a nice scent bubble the whole day long.

So this was the first niche bottle I bought. I went to a niche perfumery and smelled a lot of fragrances. I was looking for an original, fresh, young, but not too youthful fragrance that I could use everyday. I still like the fragrance very much. They did a rather good job of capturing the scent of a breeze that comes through a window. Now the difference with a breeze is that you can get a lot of different nuances and this smells quite linear. But you have these green mossy aspect, you have the fruity and airy aspects.

It is quite good for the price and actually I like the performance. Especially when you spray your clothes, you can smell it a whole working day long and I don't need a lot more for this kind of scent actually. I don't know many other scents from Miller et Bertaux, but I would recommend this scent. Nothing ground breaking, but a very good everyday scent that is something totally different than what you find at the designers fragrances and affordable and very wareable.

The bottle is nothing special, it is some kind of le laboish bottle. The sprayer is decent. It sprays a small mist, but is very directed. I like it because I often spray my wrists and with very wide mists I lose a lot of juice. If you want more fragrance, just spray more sprays... The only thing I did not like about the bottle, was that the label was put on pretty poorly. Mine hade bubbles under the label.

So this is the first luxury niche fragrance I have spent my money on. Is it that great? It depends how much you like it, as with every fragrance. Is it an Aventus clone? Nope, not by my nose. It smells greener and airier (but with great performance). It is not that complex to my nose. It does not take you on a fragrance journey, it is rather linear, but the smell you get is very good. I love the smell. I like smelling it all day. It is fresh, fruity, green, slightly woodsy with a watery character. To my nose, it is very unisex, though others find it rather masculine. I don't get a super realistic pineapple, it is more fruity citrusy to me, but I don't mind. I don't want to smell like pineapple. I'm raving about about it as others, so why did I buy it? No other fragrance that I have smelled does what Hacivat does. One to two sprays linger all day in a very pleasant way. I do one or two sprays on one or both wrists and I am surrounded with u super pleasant fresh, fruity green smell, mossy, that is not too sweet, not too sour or bitter
, just perfect fresh to me. And I never get tired of smelling it. It smells like nothing else to me. I prefer it over Aventus. For the people that are afraid of reformulation. I contacted Nishane and they state that their formula has not changed. I noticed, however, that

1. you can get olfactory fatigue with Hacivat, especially when you spray around your neck (I advise you to not spray too close to your nose).

2. This fragrance needs some maceration time. In the beginning, it was quite shy in performance but has really opened up after a few months.

There are some reviews that state that the performance is not good and there might have been reformulations. I think these are due to olfactory fatigue and or writing the review before there was enough maceration. This one performs the same as the older decant I had.

The only thing that would change was a bit more complexity, a bit more development in the vein of the old classical perfumes could have made it even better than it was.

I love how the bottle looks. My only issue with it, is that the white paint is very fragile. I touched it with a another perfume bottle, and there is already a chip of the pain that came of. Also, if you put the cap on it, it touches the paint every time, so expect that there will be some chipping after a while. For this money, I would have expected a bit more quality finish here.

Recommended if you love the smell. Like with most fragrances.