FabianO

Wow, less than a minute on the skin, and I am willing to get rid of this surrogate as soon as possible.

I admit it, I haven't encountered such an artificially veiled impression of green scents for a long time. There are a number of detergents, and that's a nasty association that this aroma holds.

In a word: disgusting. In an extremely unnatural way, cobbled together from - I don't know - iso-E-super, cashmere, ambroxane?

Nothing in "Velvet Cypress" is real, lively, invigorating, wiry, dynamic, casual, Mediterranean. Instead, a mixture of blended, contourless, amorphous impressions that, if I had to endure them on someone sitting in front of me on the bus, would drive me to get off earlier and do something for my 10,000 steps a day rather than endure them longer than necessary. Really!

In order not to slip through the grid as a plagiarist - Hajo21 has already made the cover below, but I like to jump on the train.
I had almost feared that this Christmas sugar bombing would fly to the top of the men's ranking with the very same concomitants I just mentioned.

No, I admit it, it shakes me up at Le Mâle Le Parfum. The original has undoubtedly become a classic, which I also find too opulent, too sweet, but which somehow leaves a clear fingerprint.

Here, however, two blatant counter currents meet, which I find truly olfactorically annoying: On the one hand, the sugar bombardment of lots and lots of cardamom and vanilla, plus powdered iris. I perceive the vanilla extremely artificial, striking and unnatural. Cardamom can be very beautiful in a good dose, but here it hits you on the omme with a rubber hammer as if you had quickly eaten 3 lockdown fire tongs punch.

And then there's - yes, unfortunately as an antipode - this undertone, which really reminds me of the cheap, somewhat sour and aqautic "Alaska" shower gel from Axe, which I was really keen on as a teenager, but whose quality was quickly removed. This cheap lab style, coupled with an overkill of overcharged sweet pre-Christmas ashes, is simply fierce in the nose and even narrowly dosed brutal.

No, I strongly disagree with the canons of praise that are effusively spread here. I would not like to smell that a second time....

The purism that is supposed to be inherent in this fragrance, the only two ingredients listed above and also the diabolic color were the reason why I ordered this lutens for testing.

Orange peel and clove (elsewhere you read about tangerine and nutmeg) really set the tone here and the colour truly matches the contents.

The orange peel itself is the crass determinant at the beginning. Harvested almost somewhat unripe, a hearty, slightly bitter, but refreshingly spicy peel pierces the nose, whereby the flanking clove does not exactly stop behind the mountain. Some people may think of Christmas, but the complete absence of winter aromas (such as vanilla or amber) makes it possible to draw the clove into warmer climates.

When I recently tasted a red wine aged in a Bourbon barrel in my Insta wine blog, I realized once again how much the presence or absence of just one single component can shift the overall structure. The wine slipped aromatically completely into the winter category, as it had lost all of its bright fruitiness due to the sweetness and candy like quality of the whiskey cask and had put on a windbag coat

Here now it works the opposite way: The dominance of the per se summery orange (peel) allows for completely different atmospheric associations, although I fear that one or the other (as can be read below) is so strongly influenced by carnation=winter in his life experience that the head cinema inevitably starts up and chases the Christmas market visit through his head.

Nevertheless, it's an interestingly made scent, a little too present at the back, which is a little too violent with the carnation, especially in the middle part (when the orange fades). But worth testing.

Yes, it's amazing how long this summer beauty has passed me by.
Amidst the many rather mediocre, unnatural summer scents, "Bergamote 22", already 14 years old, is a true, clean, floating beauty.

Bergamot is really the creamy, delicate centre, softened by orange blossom and a micro-bud of vanilla at the back. Somehow a simple, but high quality and simply well cut white T-shirt comes to my mind as an association and clothing counterpart. There are so many motives (which I tend to do myself), but in the end a clear, redundant T-shirt that drifts into a slim-fit doesn't distract from the wearer so much

And that's how I detect that Le Labo smell. Airy, clear, citric, not carrying too much olfactory ballast, but without being banal.
Good shelf life and simply an adorably creamy bergamot for the summer.

Strange that this already 20 years old Malle has not yet appeared on my radar screen, he has been receiving much, much praise here at Parfumo for a long time now.

"Musc Ravageur" is in fact a rather magnificently composed autumn and winter scent, which is repeatedly attested a somewhat chubby, macho-like, slightly grubby attitude at the bottom. Yes, a certain self-confident broad-leggedness is not to be denied to the Malle, although I don't find it so wicked (maybe I am simply used to too much with just under 1000 written comments...;-) )

The musk is pithy, no question, the prelude also needs some getting used to, especially in the first few minutes a quite brute mixture of lavender, tangerine and cinnamon. Luckily the whole thing soon balances out, vanilla peels out, "Musc" becomes cuddly, voluminous, also a bit gourmand, in its core also animalistic ambergris.

I would strongly recommend a careful dosage, and outside it may be less than 5 degrees Celsius (which is undoubtedly becoming more and more difficult in times of climate change...). On the whole, the scent is very well balanced, the cinnamon (fortunately) fades into the background after a few minutes, the musky vanilla and amber are the bosses in the ring for a long time.

At times I feel strongly reminded of Kurkdjian's "Grand Soir", which I also appreciate very much in deep winter, supplemented by the massive, alpha-like musk jewelry.

Yes, not everyone can and will like it in its thoroughly obtrusive basic gesture, but qualitatively it is already a heavy gun.