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To me this fragrance is an enigma. If you were to read the notes here I'm not sure you'd get an accurate picture of what's going on? Perhaps the Ylang, cashmerean and bergamot are all represented, the drift wood mood is also evoked throughout as it was in the men's version which I liked. This is something Chong and Amouage's various perfumers do really well, making fun-house mirror images of the masculine and feminine release concepts. I get a kind of wetter, tulip/hyacinth/narcissus in the opening but only for a very fleeting moment becoming sweeter more exotic, lightly powdery and violet like. It's not as sweet and characteristic as a straight forward violet, but that's all I'm capable of describing it as right now. Ionone dryness here to me. The dryness of this 'acquatic' or seaside fragrance should be contradictory but this is where the driftwood note is so apparent. It's more liked to something which has imbibed those, salinated, seawater qualities over a long period, drying out in the sun but still seeped in it, and waiting to be soaked again by the next tide. The woody attack at the start is similar to cypriol or papyrus and works well with the florals but is a bit of a challenge too. I think they just judged this right and when settled and dried right the way down this quality fades in to a much more musky, hazy character. I love Cashmerean but it's much maligned as a cheap, aroma chemical way of building a bit of warmth and structure, and although I can't ever really describe it as prominent, the effect is here in the latter stages for sure. So this is a very unusual fragrance then, which evokes the sea without resorting to the usual 'blue' cliches, citrus (well there's some) acquatic, ozone, salty, seaweed or generous application of the Calone molecule. It doesn't lean on these crutches in the same way the masculine counterpart doesn't either. I'm not mad about this fragrance and although I like the opening a lot, the mid part less so (is weird) and the drydown is good. Lasts well but is mellow, it's got a lot going for it.
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A true Amouage, this is a shapeshifter. It opens very similar to Oud Minérale, with a twist of ylang alongside, then comes the cashmeran. For a while, I could only smell the cashmeran, but then it shifted again, and I started getting a rich, realistic wood feel. It seemed simple, turned out to be very complex, and I love it. This one is strong, but not overpowering. There's definitely more going on than the notes suggest. I'm getting a touch of sweetish mint, somewhere between geranium and spearmint, and possibly a whiff of jasmine, although maybe that's the ylang in disguise. Underneath it all is exceptionally high quality patchouli, leaning bone-dry and without a trace of pickle, and the cashmeran resurfaces to warm it slightly. The more the wear goes on, the more addictive I'm finding it. It's also worth mentioning that, while there's no identifiable incense specifically, there is the general feel of incense, I guess the house DNA, which is heavenly for me as an incense lover. It doesn't resemble anything else apart from the fleeting twinkle of Oud Minérale, but that's probably just the calone. Calone can be horrific with one tweak in the wrong direction but this is genius. One last thing, as others have said it's nothing like BH Man, I beg to differ, I think there are clear common threads, woods, mint, salt, to name three, and it feels related if you're familiar with both.