Hands down the best wearable, sexuest coffee frag I've tried (and I've tried more than a few haha). This is soooooo sexy!. I keep sniffing myslef, it's like a coffee and cacao blend with some cardamom and vanilla. If Gourmand coffee was a genre/category, then this would certainly fit the bill. Defo my fave coffee scent!.
Sadly, due to social media and my own fascination with Olivier Cresp's own brand AKRO I'd heard quite a bit about these prior to finally ordering the sample set and sniffing them this week. Everyone said Awake was a reference coffee centric or big coffee noted fragrance, what a disappointment then that it isn't. Has a touch of mint and chocolate in the opening, it's not cacao powder or dark, it's more drinking or milk chocolate, perhaps benzoin too. Then clearly the coffee starts to percolate and it's gets a little bitterness in the background which I enjoy, but it's not the bracing, straight up triple shot I was anticipating. If you were thinking it might be along the lines of Kerosene Follow then prepare for disappointment. I mean clearly it's well made and other stuff is happening but the woody, diffusive base and relentless choco/coffee combo is not something I want to smell of and feels like a novelty fragrance I have a hard time taking seriously. I wanted to love it, and as a collection (in hindsight having smelled them all at time of writing this) they hang together somewhat cohesively, but largely as a collection of fragrances I personally don't see myself reaching for.
