Landshark321

This is my wearing of Caramelized Condensed Milk, a Dua original in the Dua Designer Line from earlier this year, after receiving it in a swap. It’s well-named, being creamy, milky caramel with a fitting burned sugar aspect as the name suggests. So it has a bit of creaminess whereas another fairly similar DDL offering, Caramel Sugar Elixir, does not have the creaminess and instead focuses more on the sugar. But it’s great to have both options, and I think they’re comparably lovable, especially for gourmand fans.

Its pricing is reasonable at $33 for 30ml (sometimes with further discounts available) in the Dua Designer Line and it performs well, as is pretty standard. Very nice to have in the mix. I’ll have to do a side by side with Caramel Sugar Elixir at some point.

7 out of 10

Finally doing a proper sampling of the latest release from Imaginary Authors, The Language of Glaciers, a sharp, dry, woodsy blend that has a sort of iris-adjacent, cashmere-led sharpness that’s quite powerful, seasoned by juniper and white pine with a florality that is attributed to lilac, a note I’m not too familiar with. There are some familiar aspects of TLOG elsewhere in the IA catalogue, so it smells familiar, in a way. It offers the sharpness of Telegram with the sweetness; the dry woody quality of Every Storm a Serenade but without the musky semi-animalic semi-sweet raw quality; the dryness of O, Uknown! without its tea. Evolution-wise, it’s predictably quite a bit sharper in the opening and dries down a bit smoother and ever so slightly sweeter. I like it, but as with O, Unknown!, I think it might take a little time for me to warm up to it further.

This is priced at $105 for 50ml in EDP concentration, now the standard pricing for the line that had only increased finally after more than 7 years, which is really remarkable, and is still quite reasonable around the $2/ml mark. Like the rest of the line, it’s sold via both the house website a number of US retailers like Perfumology. The house site also offers a travel size at $42 for 14ml.

7 out of 10

First try of Profumum Roma Gioiosa, one of the house’s most recent releases (from 2023), a vibrant blend of citruses and vanilla, first and foremost, colored by coconut and jasmine as to make it less a citrus gourmand than, say, Dulcis in Fundo or even Acqua e Zucchero. It’s robust and invigorating, but elegant and smoothly blended, too. It’s rich in the style of other fragrances from the house but not over the top, and while the coconut gives it a slightly beachy/tropical vibe, it’s not a dominant aspect, just part of the overall ensemble. It’s really nice to smell something akin to others like Meringa and Dulcis in Fundo while not being redundant.

Gioiosa is priced at $319 for 100ml, the brand’s updated pricing, seemingly, from the more recent $275, and is sold at a handful of US boutiques like Luckyscent, Ministry of Scent, and Osswald. So it’s a pricey barrier to entry, but not an untenable cost per ml in the current market, in my opinion, though the travel size is perhaps a little too big and too expensive, too. Still, I love the brand.

8 out of 10

First wearing of the latest Zaharoff release, Signature Bloom, the house’s first explicitly floral-named fragrance that’s not rose-specific. It’s a lovely floral blend, bright, sweet, fresh, creamy, solidly white-floral-leaning bouquet of jasmine, orange blossom, and gardenia, almost citric, with some noticeable Zaharoff Signature DNA—namely, a bit of a sweet resinous aspect, particularly in the dry down. As with almost every release in the house, the care taken to make Signature Bloom both easygoing and quite interesting, is palpable. Even as someone who’s usually floral-skeptical, I’m not at all surprised that George made this work so well, and while it’s perhaps stereotypically feminine-leaning, it’s well-rounded and smooth to the point that anyone that wants fresh comfort would likely find it in this fragrance.

Signature Bloom is EDP concentration and is priced at $155 for 60ml, in line with most of the house’s pricing, and very reasonable for a high-quality product in the current market.


8 out of 10

Bleu de Dua is Dua’s inspired expression of vintage Bleu de Chanel EDT, which is my favorite version of the fragrance, as it has more of the blend of freshness and depth than the subsequent EDP and Parfum versions which lean both sweeter and darker and lose a bit of the EDT’s freshness. Bleu de Dua too is a touch less fresh than its inspiration but still very rich and quite close, overall. And as part of the Dua Designer Line, its pricing is especially reasonable, at $33 for 30ml with additional discounts sometimes available. Overall, like the original, it’s a classy, modern, blue, fresh blend, and subtly masculine.

7 out of 10