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Now despite my moaning about how beige the branding of Amouage has seeming become in recent years, this is the jewel in the crown of what is an impressive trio of perfumes. To say Outlands felt like Zarokian doing her signature thing and Reasons was creative and interesting but I didn't connect with it, Lustre is magic right off the bat! For me it opens with a powdery rose/iris, outrageous pastel pink and fluffy but with masses of substance and character, quintessential Amouage character too, because you can smell the twinkle of resins which underlie this perfume before turning into a sensual warm woody, balsamic affair. There's a classiness to this perfume, befitting it's price. No actually scratch that, someone told me they're £750 or something? Fuck off Amouage!!!! Where there's a heavy use of resins to create rich, deep perfumes with a stratifying heft, less can be more, and can make for diffuse, delicate and powdery smells which for me is when resin is actually utilised to open up a composition rather than weight it down or to use a cooking term 'thicken' it. This application smells like resins which do just this, such as benzoin, styrax, tolu balm etc... which have sweet, spiced facets and show the real deft hand of the perfumer (or in this case perfumers) to create something so robust yet fragile. The most heady of the lot is labdanum and it's use in here is prominent, certainly in the heart with the Ambrarome material really coming to the forefront as it dries down. I usually don't like Ambraome but I can actually smell it in here and it stops short of that awful off note I get from it, again another display of the perfumers getting it right. I adore this, really good perfume. My pick of what I've already conceded to be a strong trio from the brand. Update 19/12/24 Okay so wearing this was a little different of an experience to spraying on a card and my arm. I still love it, but it's worth noting that it immediately became a big labdamic, cuddly, base heavy perfume and much of the top note detail (that sort of powdery, lightly floral aspect) which had been so dominanant in the opening 30min to an hour on a card and initially on my wrist, seems to be far less prominent on my neck and clothes etc... perhaps my perception changed having smelled it a couple of times? dunno? it's still a delight though and still probably just edging first place out of this collection but it's seemingly more simplistic now than the other two.
It smells nice but there's something making me immediately anosmic, which is what I've come to expect from Rasquinet, a huge slug of woody amber nasal short circuiters. It's a shame to use this heavy handed modern style in the context of creative perfumery with such fine ingredients, because the ambrarome stops me from smelling them properly.