DN1982

There's actually a Creed coming at my feet, uh, nose. With summer scents - who actually decides such nonsense? Even a Quorum or M7 is fun in summer - I don't really have it like that. It doesn't bother me when I beat my fellow men to death with spices and woods even at temperatures above 35 degrees - I'm quite egotistical about that.
But this one, I like him. Herb-citric, also a little bit sparkling the genie starts, if you let him out of the bottle. Not quite as vetiver as the name promises, but a tart, slight spiciness is already mixed in. Citrus plus pepper equals ginger. No, not quite, but similar and remarkably slightly powdery in the background. And there's something else, but I can't think of the name right now. I'll pass it on when I come to the funnel. The less pleasant, such a subliminal touch, which has a certain similarity to Cool Water, disappears quickly. But the original vetiver also disappeared quickly, it's not worth talking about the base notes. Once there is a nice summer scent and then it has a half-life of finely atomised petrol in the combustion chamber of a running petrol engine. Is there an octane booster for this? Then I look at the price of this water and do not know whether I laugh or cry or just make fun of it.... or just feel like a fool

There are scents that are round in themselves. There are fragrances that generate arcs of tension and yet are round in themselves. And there are Raco Rabanne's pure extra small ones. And he can't do either one or the other.
I don't know if that's a stupid coincidence here on Parfumo: the younger the fragrance (in relation to the market launch), the less differentiation is made in terms of the individual scents, in other words, there is no longer any division into top notes, heart notes and base notes. This is also the case here. What is the reason for this, please? If the Black Gustav is due to the manufacturers, because something that is halfway natural is no longer available in the low to medium price segment anyway (and they are not even ambitious anymore!), what is there to differentiate which component shines in which area of the fragrance spectrum?
What also annoys me are such "unambiguous" statements like liqueur. Liqueur can either be disdainfully sugared firewater or, depending on its composition, offer a very wide range of fruity notes up to the most unusual herbs. Or plant juice. That can be everything or nothing! But what is there to hide? Bare water perhaps? Or the explanation for having to deal with a synthetic who is standing there as if he wanted to and not able to? Or is it the unpleasant component in the fragrance that wants to sell you Douglette as a super-modern ingredient if you turn up your nose at the fragrance? I don't know
Already the prelude is not very harmonious. It is vanilla sweet, but the sweetness squabbles with the ginger. The thyme brings additional restlessness. I leave the plant juice and the liqueur out, that can be everything or nothing - or as I call it: customer bullshit.
But go on. I mean, it's the myrrh that tries to give the moderator, but doesn't get it off the ground, but continues to be conducive to restlessness. This means that with this fragrance we find a basic framework from the middle down to the base that has what it takes to make a statement if a line could be recognized. At times, we have the scent of colorful glossy magazines in it, and the next moment this technical scent just looks stale and musty. Another technical smell is a burnt, plastic-like note, which is the recognition factor par excellence at Terre d'Hermes. I can't get rid of the impression that an attempt has been made to copy this classic in a far less sparkling, but all the sweeter version. Even if these seemingly technical scents are balanced towards the base, Paco's pure extra-small has simply shot into the oven. I could also say Terre d'Hermes in XL-bad.
A beautiful bottle is not everything. After all, this one is not as late-pubertal as the one from Invictus. But the contents are just as arbitrary. This is what you usually get from Banana Bruno. It's a pity actually, because there are undoubtedly good approaches. But unfortunately they are only approaches. Or just the worse of two prototypes, which should have been scrapped, but for some reason went into production instead of the good sample

It has been several years since I was travelling in a very busy place. It was summer, very hot, and suddenly a gust of wind olfactorically gives me a Klitschko on the twelve, as I know it from the intensity of a fragrance only from the 80s and the first half of the 90s. A kind of gingerbread spice, though not as dark as the old familiar one, but higher, lighter levelled, very cinnamon-heavy and skillfully refined with vanilla - real vanilla, freshly scraped out of the pod with a knife, flanked at the corners with cardamom and allspice. Super quality, first cream - want to have! I try to take in the weather, who is the carrier of this divine fragrance. Hopefully I find him and he is so kind to tell me. "Beware!" "May I pass by for a moment? Excuse me, could you tell me.. There was a terrible commotion at the corner of the shopping area. Joggers, cyclists, people with heavy luggage, just wanting to get home. There's somebody coming from that direction and it's dragging the scent behind them. The wind freshens up, now the smell seems to come from another direction. Or does it? Before I have the weather again, somebody passes me with some overdosed aquatic scheixxxes, whitewashes everything - the weather is gone, not to pick up the scent anymore.

All these years I have never forgotten him, but to be honest, apart from a few irrelevant conversations, I have never had the chance to investigate further. I don't have any owner-operated perfumeries around here, and 20 horses won't get me to the overpriced douglettes! But one thing was unmistakable: this scent... it's a powerhouse, possibly an EdP, it has quality like nothing else and if I find it one day, it will cost a lot of ashes, because it was definitely not mainstream!

These days, by a stupid coincidence, I come across a bottling that was pressed into my hand with the words: "You, I think this could be what you told me about a few years ago. The "summer gingerbread"! Remember that?"
Well, I'm usually the one who has the sophistry and elephant memory, which I proved by answering with a "Oh yes, I remember it very well".
Cap down, sniff the spray. Oh unused, you can't smell anything. Let's put pressure on it. "Damn, it's heavy, it's so hard, it hooks like a pig," I think. Then there's a crack and the juice from two sprayers is on the back of my hand. I wave my arm in front of me a couple of times so that the alcohol evaporates faster. After ten times the back of my hand still feels damp. Then I realized that this is not EdT, there is much more oil in it. At the same time the first harbinger of the scent moved towards my nostrils. Yes, I'm getting there. Keep waving your arm to speed up the drying process. Fuck it! Slowly moved the back of my hand towards my nose and in the next moment it was as if I was punching myself in the face with my fist. That's him! That the hell is him! The spice and vanilla combination as described above. The tobacco here is anything but harsh, rather soft in the background and with a rather sweet aroma, if necessary the Tonka plays a trick on me. No, the tobacco doesn't really want to, it's rather the cocoa that provides the touch of astringency. You could also blame the dried fruit for the astringency, it's all very closely interwoven, difficult to break down into its individual parts. What the tree sap is supposed to be, however, is not revealed to me. Tree sap is simply too general. Every plant, every tree has, if you cut it, a typical smell. From mild smells, which are hardly noticeable and very similar in many plants - the mainstream botanicals - there are also very conspicuous character heads, which you can nuzzle out of 100 others without a doubt. Here, however, it is difficult, or more precisely impossible for me to say anything more precise. Unless I have rediscovered a jewel and now know what it is called!

That's the first question that came to my mind when I took this guy for a test. Yeah, the typical "summery" note when you spray it on. Squeaky freshness, here underlined with a slightly tart spice, which is consistent in itself. Nothing is bitten in the course, nutmeg and cedar push Sun Men in a rather harsh direction, in the middle even a slightly musty undertone comes out, but it subsides again. Is that good? Well, certainly - but then a sweetness comes into play, not too penetrating, but still present, so that I immediately have to think of the vanilla-tonka boredom. But there's no way that stuff - so what's playing that sweet trick? I am at a loss

But where I am not at a loss is the fact that this is another one of those scents that I have tasted umpteen times and which not only bore me to death but slowly but surely start to have a repulsive effect.
Sun Men fits seamlessly into fragrances like Fan di Fendi, Lee Cooper's RDLC, O Boticarios Men Only and Montblanc's Presence: one a tad sweeter, another a tad apple-fruity, another leathery (the order does not match the similarities mentioned). If you like them and you have an alternative to the similarities mentioned, you can also have a look here, although it doesn't make much sense. It doesn't come close to classics like Jil Sander's masterpiece Background

What am I reading here? Blindbuy Superstar, a treat, an extraordinary fragrance you never heard of.
Yes, folks, when I get a fragrance like this in front of my nose for the first time, it is indeed extraordinary. But I want to write a little something about it. Ginger and bergamot are not the number 1 in the top note, more audible of the two is the ginger, but the cinnamon is - logically - concise and stays down to the base, but disappears towards the end. The apple, which is no less concise in the middle, actually plays its part in the top note. In the further Drydown and the further Presence approaches its end, which unfortunately comes a little bit too early, a slight restlessness comes in, which tries to break the sweetness or to take away its one-dimensionality. At this point I find it difficult to tell whether it's the sage or the dust-dry teak; I'd rather tend to the teak.

Something nice for the price, I'm sure. But it's not sooo extraordinary now, because I had at least 2 fragrances in my repertoire that shoot in the same direction as Presence. The first would be RDLC from the British fashion label Lee Cooper. Both fragrances are very similar, but the more successful variant is clearly Presence, especially since RDLC has a strong pungent note of dry willow and lime wood, which perhaps a woodcarver would appreciate.
Another fragrance that goes in that direction was O Boticario Onix, which I loved very much. Here, however, the Brazilian is ahead of the rest, as it is set off with the tangy green apple and all in all more multi-faceted, spicy.
And even a classic and true nose-flatterer like Boss Soul is not entirely dissimilar to Presence, although this one can't be called the fragrance twin of presence.

So now I've torpedoed the uniqueness of Presence a little bit, but that doesn't mean that Presence is bad. With Spice Bomb I wouldn't even put it in the same way as in one of the comments, that's another story

Presence has a decisive advantage in spite of "discontinued": in contrast to RDLC, Onix and Soul, it is easy to obtain and at moderate prices!

By the way, since I had too many similar scents, I would have to give up a 75 ml bottle of Presence. Only applied once, the bottle is still 99.9% full. If you want it, see Souk