MonsieurTest

This contribution in the long series of new combinations of 4711 is a remarkable one. It is a relatively long remaining cologne with a woody base. "Dit is not sofort un immer uff der Flucht", our favourite barber Korianke would perhaps sum up the contrast to many other Cologne cousins. Parfuma Venice has quite revealingly titled Mandarine Cardamom as Winter Cologne down here. There was also talk of Christmas, because Cardamom was cast here for the role of Princess Mandarine's sidekick.

I am generally very fond of cardamom. But here it plays a somehow lighter, thinner, lighter role than in the darker tinted scents like YSL La Nuit, Azzaro Visit or Niko's Sculpture Gods Night. The cardamom note here tends to remind me of those in Silver Quorum (Puig). In this wonderfully woody water, the cardamom appears, like here with Geza Schön dicht mingled with lots of light wood.

The 4711 pyramid does not talk about wood at all, so that it can be assumed that besides the two title figures, there is also plenty of Iso E Super and probably Ambroxan. The whole thing gets a volume - in my opinion untypical for Cologne - which nevertheless has nothing deep. A rather large string orchestra plus woodwinds without basses and with cellos that hardly descend into the lower levels. A perfume of loud middle voices.

The Mandarin, sings with a bright soubrettist soprano over it; it is lively, halfway naturally intoned, but certainly not as round, powerful and full-bodied as those from Guerlain's Aqua Allegoria Mandarine Basilic, my mandarin reference. It doesn't last that long and it shines weinger far.

As much as I appreciate this cologne and its two main protagonists, as much as I would certainly like to count it among the best of the 4711 colognes and as versatile as its applicability seems to me due to its wood+freshness, a small doubt remains whether this really is a really big water with potential to become a favourite scent.
It does not seem to me to be as beautifully round and soft as Schöns 4711 Limette & Nutmeg. Something slightly shrill, dull, sharp, even synthetic vibrates in between. I'm guessing one of the two modern aroma chemicals mentioned, which make the whole thing look a little unnatural.

No grand cru. But a modern, original Cologne, where everyone can explore the many conceivable and certainly possible areas of application.

MOL Intens: A fragrance name to dream of!
If you drive 20 km eastwards along the Berlin Alex, you leave the noisy city and first enter the urban belt, then soon the quiet and green Brandenburg: Landkreis Märkisch Oderland, license plate number MOL. Away from B1 and B5 you can take a nice walk or live in a halfway quiet area.

A film in Monsieur Teste's head reveals In a dacha, say in Schöneiche, the pioneers of minimalism, Jean-Claude Ellena, and ultra-minimalism met a few years ago: Geza Schoen with the old master & trustee of the self-mixing German drugstore heritage, Lutz Lehmann. In a rickety wooden dacha, surrounded by rhubarb and early blossoming plants, the common concern was discussed, celebrated and MOL intensely born.

At Ellena's house in Hermes, something like that is called Un Jardin sur Le Nil or a roof terrace somewhere else in North Africa. Berlin's perfume world heritage site Geza Schoen responded with the famous Escentric Molecules 01: Pure ISO E Super. And this is exactly what the other half of the Berlin World Heritage Site, Mr. Lehmann, now fills into its wonderful retro flacons and gives it the very Ellena-like, flower and wood dreams evocative title MOL Intens.
Especially in confinement times, this suburbia or bacon belt sign, which might otherwise be somewhat smiled at in the western part of the city centre, now makes people who are stuck in the city dream: of airy dachas in Märkisch Oderland, of the scent of spring, of the summer or autumnal allotment garden blossoms of the oak avenues around Schöneiche.

Well, fun and culture clash aside: You can read about the fascinating scent qualities of Iso E Super, which is available in pure form with MOL Intens (as in Geza Schoen's Escentric Molecules 01), here below and at Geza Schoen's pioneer fragrance. It offers a woody-sandy-water-like fragrance experience, which also seems to interact strongly with the individual skin chemistry processes. In high concentration this wonder weapon of newer aroma chemistry is said to be mixed with many famous (and by me appreciated) summer scents: for example the elegant Eau boisée by Guerlain or the clearly louder Terre d'Hermes.

This Iso E Super can now be purchased at Escentric Molecules for a high price (like the football artist Messi and many others). Or very cheap in big bottles in the net (no idea what you can get from sources unknown to me: but chemically it should always be exactly the same arrangement of molecules). Or you can get it, with style and here explained dream name, as MOL Intens, from Herry Lehmann. Of course we strongly appeal for this.

You are thereby promoting the wonderful business of Lehmann's individual perfumery. You show yourself as the avant-garde of international hipsterism with regard to underestimated Brandenburg counties (Schöneiche will be the new Babelsberg - in a few decades). And you get a very interesting, ultra-modern fragrance from a real vintage boutique

The purchase (and every spraying) of MOL Intens reminds me of the strange contradictions of the past, when the West German student bought his first Armani pour hommes or the beautiful Yves Saint Laurent Jazz in the Intershop on the Transit or in the S-Bahn station Friedrichstrasse. And with this unheard-of luxury, he simultaneously promoted the construction of the declining GDR socialism. And found these contradictions in an indefinable (probably decadent) way as world-historically tingling.

Mr. Teste feels an analogous historical tingle today when using the postmodern minimalist MOL Intens from the venerable house of Lehmann, which is so deeply rooted in 20th century Berlin history.

Reading educates. Reading about perfume - here as in books - enriches the store of knowledge, increases the ability to distinguish and ultimately probably also the sensual pleasure. Reading stimulates the senses. Or why and for what do you browse around here?
However, the proliferation of books also poses new problems for some people, such as swelling and even overflowing perfume collections. Or the arrival of classics that have been so often sung about and classified as historical milestones that the perfume lover now wants to know, own and, if possible, appreciate or even love them. Sometimes this happens very quickly, and as if by magic - but sometimes it requires a little patience and practice.

If you get older or if you are always interested in old things, this increases the attraction of fragrances that have been used for 50, 100 or even 150 years in all kinds of historical settings and have influenced your 20 sqm and contacts for 8 hours. A splash of Eau de Cologne Imperiale and off you go on a fantasy journey with the Guerlain carriage to the Paris of 1853. A splash of Jicky and you think back to the Paris of 1889, the Eiffel tower has just been built up and the masses marvel at the novelties of the world exhibition. Among other things, the first perfume to boast synthetic vanilla: Jicky. 80 years later, it is said to have been the signature scent of the classic James Bond mime, Sean Connery. And what guy wouldn't want to slip into his skin occasionally for a few hours?

BUT: One splash of Jicky - and we have a problem! Next to and in front of the guerlain-like, elegant blend of vanilla and lavender of finely blended traces of rose and iris, amber, vetiver and other spices and woods, the notorious animal scent of the civet cat throngs. Even if long ago synthetically imitated, it is still there. It stays on and off for a few hours, every now and then, and makes the whole thing interesting and appealing, but for Mr. Test just appealing in the sense of irritating: repulsive and only slightly attractive.

Now one could say: Well, then stay away from Jicky, wear Vol de Nuit and Heure Bleue and Chant d'aromes (all of which have similar distinguished old-fashioned Guerlain tidbits like Jicky) and of course the men's fragrances from the Champs Elysées 68, which are closer to the gentlemen's fragrances for messieurs anyway. But Jicky already lives here, and Mr. Teste occasionally wants to go back to the 1889 World's Fair. What to do? the Guerlainist now asks himself. We want to carry Jicky, but we want to defuse it somehow. May the ?

Wine or whisky?
Mr. Teste would never spray a Burgundy or Sauvignon blanc, a Rioja or Riesling with water or even with coke (as it is said by rich Russians, who are supposed to make the finest Bordeaux on the Cote d'Azur so palatable and disgrace the newly rich). And yet he allows himself - as the connoisseurs' rules also provide for - to stretch his whisky with water, his port wine occasionally as well and the latter, in summer, sometimes on tonic. Jicky seems to me in its density and power more like a whisky than a wine. Therefore, one may probably have the same difficulties and manners with its civet as with the sharp peaty aromas of an Islay Single Malt?

Experiments: careful, smallest possible Sptitzer from the beehive flacon of the Jicky EdPs. Maybe instead of the usual back of the hand on more distant parts of the body? But Mr. Teste feels strange, if he should suddenly, for Jicky's sake, scent his knees or crotch to keep the cat at a distance from the irritable nose.

So we try light counterweights. For this we will probably layer most simply with scents that already contain lavender and/or vanilla. For the time travel cinema you could use Atkinson's English Lavender (goes back 50 years with the Guerlain carriage) or Caron's Pour un homme (50 years forward into the 20th century) or Puig's light Agua Lavanda (Sinatra's favourite scent from the 1940s). Yes, but: as a Sinatra Connery son with the heavy jicky and the light and fresh lavender water, that not only gives you great cinema in historical terms, but is also good for the nose. Next Monsieur wants to try it with vanilla scents. And then also with citric colognes. Because in the Jickys-head notes, there are bergamots and lemons and tangerines, only with me you are quickly fetched by the cat...

One thing is clear: if the fragrance didn't undoubtedly have a wonderful drydown, lasted for a long time, radiated Guerlainian elegance, then you could simply leave it alone, leave it to the ladies, put it in a museum and keep your distance. But I think: Jicky is worth the effort and you should continue to wear this treasure from 1889, even if in different ways. The Guerlain house itself has remixed its Habit Rouge (citric top note in EdT somewhat pungent and dominant), which is bulky in other respects, in a quite formidable way, for example with the softer and smoother Habit Rouge L'eau and Habit Rouge EdP and probably also with the Habit Rouge dress codes which are hard to get. So please don't stone me, dear Jicky admirers, if you are thinking about and trying to do something like this here.

Now, on a more prosaic note, the sillage of the EdP seems strong to me, though less massive than that of Shalimar. The durability as well. The flacon is the beautifully ornate, now widely used glass beehive of Guerlain's women's classics; only the light plastic cap is a little disillusioning, which somewhat hampers the friction-free immersion into the age of carriages and trains.

Who can carry Jicky where?
Unisex is already checked off by the guaranteed identity of Mr. Teste and his key witness Sean Connery. For women, however, this fragrance is of course also wearable and perhaps more obvious. For all of them, however, Jicky seems to fit less into the office (except maybe for the Christmas party with ulterior motives) and more into the evening. It can be used all year round except in midsummer. Not in the sauna or for sports with it! The animalistic touch gives the whole thing an erotic touch, which of course doesn't seem to come across as directly as with Jicky's daughter Shalimar, who saw the light of day in Paris a generation later.

But maybe all this is also a question of skin chemistry and nasal idiosyncrasies and Jicky seems different to others in this respect?
Because one thing is clear: this classic consists of many layers and is knitted quite finely. You will notice that when you read the many other excellent comments here.

And once again thanks and bows to the community: Without Parfumo.de, Mr. Teste would hardly ever have come across the fragrances of this Parisian fragrance factory, which also produces the similarly muscular Lapidus fragrances.

After the beautiful green-spicy classic Bogart Man first moved in to round off the collection of retro, green-soapy fragrances, he was soon followed by the original One Man Show. The two old bullies are seldom used, but especially in early spring, their pot-like natural herbaceousness fit into the landscape quite nicely.
What the perfumers Rainbow and Minigolf felt down here and put into words, the Gold Edition of One Man Show now also got involved. And already his performance is powerful, even if rather diffuse: dark fruity, yes, apples, but not sweet ones, but already at the beginning slightly musty. If there's mandarin in this show, it's certainly not a brightly shining one like the Aqua Allegory Mandarine Basilic or the 4711 Mandarine Kardamon. Bogart Gold offers dark red-golden fruitiness (with the transition to brown tones)

I have to think of Friedrich Schiller, who, as the motor for writing, stored rotting apples in his desk drawer. Their scent inspired him! If the old Swabian had used the Boss apples from Metzingen back then, the wonderfully steep aphorisms in Don Carlos and Wallenstein might not have happened. Had he been able to get the Bogart Gold Edition in Weimar: maybe he would have delighted us with perfect choral tragedies or even better: with comedies?
Because this fragrance is more oblique than classically elegant. It is powerful and long lasting. In my nose it has a strange mixture of light sweetness, irritating and irritating mustiness and deep earthiness. Probably this results from apples, then cinnamon-lavender. And the whole thing rests on a strange amber-labdanum base. On the handkerchief it easily lasts for 2 days and delivers there similar dark earthy echoes like Hechter's Caractère or Arrogance Homme, while the Original One Man Show stays somehow greener even on the long distance.

These Bogarts have something, but they are not very easy to use in company, as they seem to me more like hearty home cooking than an engraved French menu. Bogart is not Guerlain, but in its own way it is a French, popular fragrance heritage: more Parisian East than 5th arrondissement. The Bogarts probably use large calibres, measuring cups instead of pipettes when mixing; the same applies to the Lapidus grenades I know of. And these are by no means bad scents. They seem to me to be more interesting than many weak new releases.
Their areas of application are not easy to define.
The best way to wear the golden one-man-band is to wear it on your own or in a somehow already strongly scented environment: smoky barbecues, gardening, so that the neighbours behind the hedge get a scented greeting, maybe with animals in nature... On building sites rather than in offices or seminar rooms. Maybe also at loud outdoor summer events?
Or just now, in the confinement, in rainy weather after many sunny early spring days, at your own desk.

Without Parfumo.de, Monsieur would never have tried or even purchased a fragrance of this brand name and a bottle of this ugliness.
But the comments of the esteemed predecessors here were so positive and stimulating that this Italian alley-scent now, hidden in the second row, has been living here for a while. And his older, more massive and darker brother (Arrogance homme) and the Arogance Uomo Aftershave, which by the way is also very persistent and gently swings through the morning, also lives here.
The scent is very difficult to describe, but I hear a nicely balanced mixture of a melody of nutmeg, quite strong but at the same time soft and less sharp than in Dunhill Edition. And underneath is a somewhat fluffy and soapy clean bed of flowers and woods that I can't decipher. The vetiver might deliver a basso continuo, but so piano that you don't notice it as such - not comparable to vetiver scents like the Guerlain or the Encre Noirs.
In Germany, you rarely seem to catch this ugly duckling with the soul of a beautiful swan online, in Italy's drugstores probably more often. For those who like it discreet, the after shave, which carries further than most of its kind, is enough. The Sillage of the EdT is rather strong, the durability is good with about 8 hours. I think you can wear this fine fragrance of unpronounceable name in summer and winter quite well - subtracted perhaps extremely warm or extremely cold days, where it could appear pungent or too listless.
One problem remains, of course, what you want to answer in an appealing environment when you are asked for the name of this nasal flatterer. Arrogance Uomo is hard for an adult with manners to say.