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My Signature
627 reviews
This smells a lot less like a rose-oud than I expected. The initial blast is petrolly oud with piercing, jammy florals, all of which dies down quickly to make way for the undulating, complex waves of woody oud and, to me, magnoilia first, and then rose and hyrax in equal measures. The rose is reminiscent of the metallic roses Christopher Sheldrake makes for Serge Lutens, although this doesn't smell like a Serge Lutens perfume, make no mistake. There is a breathtaking depth to this, with no synthetic edge whatsoever. You have to like magnolia, and you have to be OK with hyrax, as they're both persistent (I mean, all of the notes are but I feel like these two could be the most challenging, as the oud is a very woody, erudite oud). Before long it starts to develop a rich, ambery, nutty, chocolatey base, which is when my heart really starts to sing. Absolutely wonderful and worth every penny. Update: it seemed light when I wore it in my apartment, but out and about it's NUCLEAR, be careful. Update: the more I wear this, the more the hyraceum dominates. This is way more stinky and challenging than I first thought!
This is modern perfume hyperbole, so strong it should be impossible. One tiny dab somewhere on your person is MORE than enough, and 10ml will last a lifetime. Personally I'm sick of the dearth of akigalawood Bischs but this one is one of the best. I can't decide if it's more or less brutal than Tubéreuse Astral, I think more.
A dash of Fils de Joie with the dank papyrus from Figment Woman, old school plum in a supporting (but restrained role) and fruity ylang ylang. Amouage is my favourite house for a reason, every composition is a triumph (I'm taking Chong era and before, recently there are highs and lows), and this is no exception.
Fully synthetic smelling. No oud, as with other Guerlains. If they're using oud, it's trace amounts just to say it's there, and this one doesn't smell remotely like oud. People who talk about "the oud" in this perfume haven't smelled oud. Very strong cardamom (like the opening of Épices Exquises) with some fig and patchouli and an enormous whack of sandalwood aroma-chemicals (I'm getting a LOT of stemone and probably janavol). This type of thing is fine, but the price is criminal considering you can buy perfumes with real oud and real mysore sandlewood in them which smell infinitely more beautiful and special and which cost the same or less per ml.
VERY strong, lasts eternally on my skin. The feel is extremely similar to the dry down of Œillet Pourpre, which I prefer. This one is a little sweet. Very heavy on the Guerlinade.
I bet $1000 dollars this is by Bisch. Update: OK so it's not. Smells boring as shit though.
I have the vintage one with the loose, ivory looking cap, and it's incredible. Strong, long-lasting and complex, I absolutely love it. The first two hours remind me of Tom Ford for Men but with way better ingredients and with the incense-floral amouage twist. It's less the smell that's the resemblance than the feel of the perfume (I came home and sprayed one on each arm and they're very different but of the same ilk). The drydown goes in a direction I wouldn't have seen coming save for some reviews here. It becomes fluffy and floral, with the creamy frankincense ebbing away underneath, absolutely gorgeous, and a credit to the perfumer because on card, I detect some sort of stinky synthetic just for a few seconds in the opening (not on skin) so this could easily have been one of the pantheon of perfumes which degenerate into some blah generic woody amber base. Here, it couldn't be further from that. This is beautiful, top-notch perfumery. It's eminently wearable in any conditions, unlike a lot of Amouages, so for me that's a real score too. Shame this 50ml will probably be my first and last due to how discontinued AF it is. It's worth noting that the pyramid above doesn't really represent the experience of smelling this perfume. All the notes are there, but it's very united, one exquisitely crafted scent, very old-school, no overload of any one thing like everyone does now.
Very natural-smelling narcissus. If I think about the seperate notes I can discern them but actually this is more of a harmonious smell that evokes the natural flower itself. The oakmoss is old-school, not sure how she did that! It does smell modern but it puts me in mind of vintage florals from the days when they weren't scared to go for it. It's very yellow and has a twinge of pissy, honeyish sweetness, absolutely lovely!
The opening 5 mins I found a bit of a struggle, as I always do with perfumes which combine boozy and fruity aspects, plus I tend to struggle with osmanthus, but then it starts to turn more serious, like a leathery tobacco or something, and I really love it. I swear it smells like there's some tobacco in here, raw, moist tobacco. The boozy, spicy side makes it sort of mouthwatering, it's incredible. I'm not sure what genre I'd put this in, it's a genre-bender for sure, as there's almost something a bit gourmand about it. It's more dynamic than Narcis Nocturne, I'm getting something different every few minutes. Now, in the drydown, it's pipe tobacco on a old desk in a library of leather-bound tomes covered in dust with a glass of maybe absinthe?! Lol, awesome!
Firstly, I've never smelled any other perfumes by Russian Adam, although I'd love to, so I'm happy to say I can circumvent all the talk of this not living up to his others etc etc. When I first got into perfume, I found that the common incense note (such as that found in Avignon, and countless others) - the sort of churchey, dry incense, didn't resemble any incense I'd ever experienced. But over time I assimilated that smell into my cognitive bank so it's what I now recognize broadly as incense. When I smelled this perfume, I remembered what incense had actually smelled like to me during my university days when I used to visit a lot of hippy shops and use a lot of joss sticks. At first it wasn't necessarily a great association, as I've moved far past those days and associate that smell with crusty student digs and the lazy stoner/raver student types who were in the periphery, the type of people who sit around getting drunk and high and talking about what's wrong with the world whilst failing to see the profound irony of the situation. Lucky for me this visceral reaction, and almost revulsion, passed quickly as I was distracted by a strange, salty sort of ever-so-slighly bilgey waft coming from my arm..... then jasmine, roses, oh my god, then I realised this was ambergris, which was softly diffusing with the florals from among some citric elemi-esque olibanum. The more I focused the more complex it got. Then I left and went to work, and during the day the perfume really dried down and I was graced by the mysore sandlewood, brooding and ebbing from my skin, close to the skin but seemingly everlasting. Today in Paris it's been snowing and windy all day, and I've been out and about between meetings being blasted with soggy, horizontal sleet, snow and rain, but the perfume endured through it all. I got home at 9pm and while I could still smell it, I couldn't resist another spritz on each wrist, so I'm not sure exactly how long it lasts, seemingly eternally. This is an incredible perfume that I percieve as at once familiar and completely original. It's like coming home to something I love, but I've never actually known it until now.
