Sherapop

Montale PURE GOLD starts out as a fruity-floral blend with a lot of clean resinous musk. I find it somewhat nondescript, especially initially, when I have trouble discerning individual notes... except for the musk which is quite big.

Later this perfume starts to seem more like a nice floral with a slight soapiness. The floral component seems to me to be mainly jasmine. I was thinking that PURE GOLD was similar in some ways to Jennifer Aniston and DKNY Pure, but in side-by-side comparisons I changed my mind. PURE GOLD is much better than those. Perhaps the idea is similar, but in this case we have much better ingredients and execution. JENNIFER ANISTON veers too far in the industrial direction in an attempt to be clean. DKNY PURE has a touch too much woodish aromachemical stuff for my tastes. PURE GOLD is perhaps how those perfumes should smell, but they don't, which is probably why they are on their way out of the stores already...

PURE GOLD is another example of Montale going beyond their area of expertise (middle eastern-inspired oud creations), to produce a decent, if not extraordinary, perfume.

Montale SANDFLOWERS evokes immediate memories of Comptoir Sud Pacifique AQUA MOTU. Something about the algae and the sea water. In waves, SANDFLOWERS has a strange oriental vibe to go with the muskiness. AQUA MOTU is even muskier and perhaps more musky than aquatic. The biggest difference between the two is the juniper in SANDFLOWERS, which is quite marked especially the opening, making this creation seem rather aromatic and the algae very mossy and green.

My understanding is that Pierre Montale was formerly associated with Comptoir Sud Pacifique, I presume as the perfumer. The similarity between SANDFLOWERS and AQUA MOTU may not therefore be my imagination! The bottles are similar, except that the Montale version of the aluminum can ends up looking sleek and niche, while the Comptoir Sud Pacifique version imparts the decided impression of being some kind of budget drugstore body spray. Is it just the trinket on the Montale that makes the difference? I don't know exactly why, but I really like the Montale bottles and really dislike the Comptoir Sud Pacifique bottles.

I am not much for aquatic fragrances, so SANDFLOWERS is not really my kind of thing, but anyone who likes AQUA MOTU is bound to like this composition, which is unisex and even leaning a bit toward the masculine side. I consider this to be an atypical perfume for Montale. It seems more like a vacation scent to me. Maybe it should be called SAND DOLLARS?

Montale SUNSET FLOWERS seems well-named to me, as the composition features dried flowers and dried grass, parched perhaps by a long day in the sun. At the very opening, I do detect a bit of violet, but mainly this creation is not very sweet, despite the green apple note listed in the official pyramid. Could chamomile be creating the grass effect? I suppose. Often I find chamomile to be rather bitter (as in Clinique AROMATICS ELIXIR), but here it smells more like dried grass.

SUNSET FLOWERS is a pleasant perfume, provided that one enjoys the scent of mixed dried flowers and grass. To me it has something of a vintage vibe, and I do find the scent to smell natural. Parched petals and sun-dried, brittle brown blades of grass are what I perceive. Rather like the scent of foliage after a brutally hot summer with no rain for weeks.

I have owned Fresh CANNABIS SANTAL for a while but don't wear it that often as it is a big sillage patchouli fragrance. Big patchouli for me is generally a stay-at-home scent. Tonight after my bath I sprayed this perfume on and was somewhat taken aback at how strong the chocolate note was. Added to that, it reminded me very much of Thierry Mugler A*MEN! Perhaps the first time I reviewed CANNABIS SANTAL I had yet to try A*MEN. I definitely felt that it overlapped with ANGEL, though. Now I am quite convinced that the composition is very similar to A*MEN, only with cocoa in the place of the coffee, and a more natural-smelling combination of basenotes, including musk.

I am aware that these days all musks are synthetic, but CANNABIS SANTAL smells much more pleasant to my nose than A*MEN, which I only wear immediately prior to a coffee bath. The interesting thing about CANNABIS SANTAL is that, despite the quite marked chocolate note, the overall feeling is somewhat masculine, so that must be the combination of the musk and the patchouli, on top of the fact that the chocolate note is really more of a cocoa bean than a bar of candy. True to the house name, CANNABIS SANTAL also smells somehow fresh, as odd as that may sound--unless you've tried some of the Fresh perfumes...

CANNABIS SANTAL is a solid offering from the house of FRESH, which for some reason has not jumped on the bandwagon to launch endless new releases. I do not believe that they have launched anything new whatsoever in a few years, which seems odd, but they have an aisle at Sephora, so I suppose that they are pulling their weight with their small but respectable cluster of "backlist" fragrances. My favorites are this and CANNABIS ROSE, but the citrus scents are pretty nice as well.

I definitely recommend CANNABIS SANTAL for testing by anyone who likes cocoa or coffee notes in perfume and also loves patchouli, as there is a lot of it here. The cannabis and sandalwood, on the other hand, are pretty low key, if even detectable by me.

Montale makes excellent Middle Eastern-inspired perfumes. Most anything with the word 'aoud' in the name is going to be a worthy representative of the ever-growing class of aoud perfumes. Once one steps out of the aoud range, however, everything is up for grabs, and it's anyone's guess what the perfume may be like!

CRYSTAL FLOWERS is a good example of a Montale which might have been a mainstream designer launch. It smells fine to me, a perfectly wearable office-ready, inoffensive fruity-floral frag. The flowers are abstract but not to the point of being unwearable. This composition reminds me of perfumes such as Creed SPRING FLOWER or Bond no 9 CHELSEA FLOWERS, both of which, too, fit into the category of office-ready inoffensive fruity floral frags. This really is a genre by now, and when I say fruity-floral, I mean more abstract floral than fruity, but there is a touch of fruity to give the overall composition a brightness. The musk used, too, is clear and clean, not dark and sweaty. This is a twenty-first-century type of perfume which has gained a legion of followers in the last few years. In some ways it may seem superficial, but it is also likable to many consumers.

Precisely because this sort of perfume is the sort of thing one runs into at Sephora among the current bestsellers, it may not be the wisest investment of one's big Montale bucks. Try before you buy.