I felt something give in me when I smelled Bruno Fazzolari Au Dela for the first time. Something about it bypasses the thinking part of my brain and goes straight to the heart. I…
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There is always something a little off-balance to me in Naomi Goodsir’s fragrances. Not artistically off-balance – but something sticking out like a sore thumb and throwing the whole thing off. While I admire…
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Amouage Afrah smells like a three-way clash between the heavy, fruity, musky aroma of champaca flowers, a licorice-like basil note, and the marine bilge unpleasantness of either ambergris or civet. The opening is heady…
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Diptyque 34 Boulevard Saint Germain is one of the reasons I am glad I don’t have access to many new perfumes where I live. It was greeted with such dismissal in the blogosphere –…
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Omer Pekji is one hell of a talented perfumer. I have been working my way through his pack of samples since March, and even though there are only five of them, they are the…
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Diptyque Tam Dao is one of those perfumes that always get cited in top ten lists of sandalwood perfumes, and so, when the opportunity presented itself, I bought it. Semi-blindly, I should add, because…
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April Aromatics Precious Woods is a wonderful woods perfume. Although natural perfumes can sometimes be rather squat and muddy, this has an impressive scope to it. There are several layers at work, and surprisingly…
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Creed Spice and Wood opens on a peppery note of clean cedar that also reads as quite boozy to my nose, at least in the first few minutes. I have sometimes noticed that the…
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Parfumerie Generale Cedre Sandaraque is a half-singed, half-syrupy woods perfume that recalls the gourmand-woody approach used in both Aomassai and Coze, but in my opinion, without the genius of either. It starts off strong but…
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Comme des Garcons Hinoki is very relaxing and outdoorsy. Hinoki wood smells very much like cedar to me, except with a slight tinge of lemon or bergamot somewhere in the mix, and a huge…