Zakaria80

Allow me to describe the person who always wore this perfume.

1992.
We had just moved back to Greece and I got in the sixth grade of elementary school where ofcourse I didn't know anyone back then. My mother started talking to this big confident lady who assured her she will convince her son Bill to sit next to me. I still remember Bill's disapproval since he had already arranged with who he would sit. (just for the record Bill is still one of my dearest and closest friends)

Mrs Dora.
A wonderful single mother who raised her 2 children all by herself with minimal support from her husband. Fearless in whatever life was throwing at her, absolute and bentless in her opinions, with fair and imposing personal traits and always clean and sharp in appearance. Very organized in all aspects and always using her mind over her heart. (well who can blame her for that)
Everytime we met at Bill's house as a kid to play for the 1000001th time Alex Kidd in master system, I always was catching some whiffs of this heavy powdery flowery smell which I hated at that time. Every time I visited (even today), the whole house smells like Elixir!!

Well don't get me wrong. I still hate it even today only with one exception: I do understand it. Maybe I need another 20 years to like it, I don't know. What I do know is I can't see anyone being able to wear it with less character than the lovely beautifully strong Mrs Dora.

Not the rule, but when you see a house with a lot of perfumes and only the very few are masculine (at least marketed at) then you get the impression that some real effort focus and time went down to create these special ones. The one I owned for quite some time and really liked was Memoire d'Homme.

Upon spraying you get the feeling that this is your typical men's cologne but it is not! You get a citrusy initial bang taking up almost the entire frame, but some nutmeg, ginger and definitely licorice are photobombing in the background.

The licorice... I got really acquainted with this note thanks to my partner's black soft licorice caramels she was stuffing my mouth with in the winter. In this composition the licorice is done right with a balanced feel to it thanks to grapefruit in the beginning and then the nutmeg. The ginger has a sparkling role keeping the structure somehow fresh.

And then there is the amazing woody semi sweet drydown that keeps going for hours on skin, not to mention its persistence on clothes. For me this is where this scent really shines. Like staring down at a pine(?) forest from a higher point with the traces of a licorice caramel you were torturing in your mouth to melt for 10 minutes. Great stuff people.

I am keeping the "oh my god!! why did you discontinue such a wonderful underatted superfantastic scent?!?!?" for some other time or scent...

Screw it...

oh my god!! why did you discontinue such a wonderful underatted superfantastic scent?!?!?

Way way back I tested Autoportrait of Olfactive Studio and fell in love with it. However it was too expensive (maybe it sounds crazy to some people here but I have this stupid rule where a 3 digit amount of money for perfumery is a no go for me) to buy it and was searching for an alternative based on the notes. The closest I found was Carbone so I snatched it of ebay without any second thoughts.

At the beginning I spotted immediately the similarity with OSA, and was happy about it thus started wearing it regularly for a month. But there was something off about the scent I couldn't put my finger on initially.

Finally my nose spotted the little tiny hitch hiker note which got on my nerves with every sniff of the way. THE FIG!!! (mind you that I adore the smell of figs and especially the leafs. There are in abundance here in Greece and in Jordan when I was a kid)

Yet the elemi, benzoin and the pepper become very ugly when combined with fig. Where Carbone is slightly buttery and swear to god close to a beef meaty kind of smell, OSA is more woody, dry and refined (Oakmoss...to the rescue!!!).

Yes Carbone was conceived before Autoportrait and maybe Mrs Lorson copied the composition but it is done waaaayyyy better and that is what counts after all. Plus any connection of this composition with the flawless GPH is excceeding the realms of sci fi. Like comparing watermelons and... I don't know.. napkins?..
Sold my bottle after testing 15mls out of 100.

Conclusion:
I don't like comparing scents but those two are very close and far away at the same time. Carbone is a wintery spicey woody perfume where you can spot easily most of the notes (plus cinnamon) but the addition of fig ruins the whole thing.

Why do I like and enjoy being a man? Here are a few reasons:

1.Because I am physically strong (only the exterior though)
2.Because I am scared at nothing (except if you approach me holding spinach pie , or a grasshopper suddenly jumps on me in the summer)
3.Because I feel no pain (except from a kidney stone which once in a while gets stuck in my ureter and if I won’t get a painkiller shot within an hour, I start crying like a little girl)
4.Because I like to admire the female form which is aesthetically and objectively more beautiful than any man
5.Because someone conceived Faubourg (edp version) for women.

Two things I find somehow silly and unevenly cheesy when I am reading a perfume review is the term of sex(y) or an age constraint for a fragrance but...

This is utterly what sex with a beautiful (and I am not referring to the outside only) mature woman must smell like. Effortlessly sexy worn by a woman with a couple of solid life experiences under her belt with the wisdom to know what she wants and how to please the male partner. Whenever a woman shall hit 40, then it's mandatory to own and wear this. This has the wow factor for my nose for the opposite sex.

A M A Z I N G!