Fragrance Reviews by kopah

Bergamot, ylang-ylang, and neroli in the top notes: check. Honeyed rose and jasmine in the heart: check. Iris, tonka, and vanilla at the base: check and mate! While I’ll admit I have no strong feelings one way or another on neroli and ylang, except that I find neroli-dominant scents boring (viz: Creed Neroli Sauvage), I love every single one of the other listed notes. And I love this perfume. I find it utterly glamorous, but at the same time flawlessly elegant—this is blonde-bombshell-in-white-furs material.

The first hour especially exhibits these characteristics. The top notes last about 15 minutes, and the heart seems to last only about 45-60 minutes. As the bright citrus and floral notes fade away, the tonka bean starts to become much more dominant. This transition is a touch bumpy, and for a while the perfume teeters on the precipice of dangerously unctuous sweetness (off of which Iris Ganache enthusiastically flings itself), but is saved by the dry powderiness which is characteristic of mellowing iris. Things resolve completely around the 2.5-3 hour mark, and Plus Que Jamais is once again stunning, and remains so for the rest of its life. I’m certain that it would be dynamite when actually worn—and in this regard, I must grudgingly admit that it is absolutely, unquestionably a woman’s perfume. There is no way in hell that I would ever dare to wear it in public. There is a limit to how much of the feminine a man can properly appropriate for his own use: if Dior Homme is a fitted pink dress shirt, Plus Que Jamais is red lipstick and stilettos. Maybe John Galliano could get away with it, but not you and I.

I count Acqua di Parma’s Fico di Amalfi as my perfect fig, but this is the perfect fig à la Guerlain. For starters, thank goodness, it’s not green. It’s juicy. It makes me want a tropical drink with a parasol in it. And once the iris comes in, it puts me in mind of some delicious sweet fruit candy. Succulent for summer.

Paprika + green. They charge $200 a bottle for this?

This is your iris. This is your iris drenched in volatile green solvents. Any questions?

This is what I expected Fumerie Turque to be like. Gobs of honey, and an incredibly realistic cured tobacco note - like sticking your nose into a pack of cigarettes, or more accurately, a pack of pipe tobacco or flavoured cigarillos. The tobacco may be just my skin, because I barely even detected it on paper. The honey and tobacco pretty much dominate the whole thing. If you like the effect, you'll like the fragrance, and vice versa.

"Big rose" is very appropriate. The huge, voluminous powdery aspect dominates for the first couple of hours. I prefer it after this aspect settles down. The tonka/vanillic drydown is very nice. I'm just not the kind of person who likes having to wait for two hours before something starts smelling good.

I only smelled it on paper, based on Turin's comments in the Guide. I have to say - it does not smell "good". It smells bleak, dusty, like sun-bleached concrete. The vaguely chocolatey note is totally inedible and is rather musty. It certainly lives up to its concept, but I can't say I want to smell it on another living person.

Strongly reminds me of Johnson's No-More-Tears baby shampoo. Definitely not worth the money...

Smells just like the soap my grandmother used to use. Not really "citrusy" at all - if it is lime, I have to agree it's the skin. Reasonably pleasant and inoffensive, but emphatically not worth the price.

I don't care what anyone else says - this smells nothing like Turkish Delight. Maybe Lutens pranked us based on the Arabic translation ([i]rahat al-hulkum[/i], meaning 'contentment of the throat') and made cough syrup instead. This scent never gets past screaming CHERRIES!!! at the top of its lungs, and the cherry shriek sporadically takes on a metallic overtone which is just plain wrong.

Starts with a very pure lavender and transitions gradually into a very pure incense, with nothing else detectable (to me) to interfere. The incense in particular is remarkably faithful to that used at High Mass in my Catholic church. It's a brilliant pairing. I think it might appeal more to fans of incense than of lavender (with Gris Clair a better pick for lavender lovers). A quiet, stately and dignified scent. One of my favourites of the exclusive line.

Starts with a delicious, juicy squirt of grapefruit citrus, but once this fades, it turns into a spice rack. Just yesterday I bought a pack of Djarum Black clove cigarettes, and I literally thought that I had left the package sitting open on my desk before I realized that the smell was coming from my wrist. I'm very surprised that something marketed as a summer fragrance would turn so spicy.

(EDP) - Starts off with a wonderful, juicy lemon that makes me think of the "orange and lemon slices" candies from the supermarket. At times, however, it veers very close to Sunlight dish detergent. Once the lemon is gone, it leaves behind an uninteresting green substructure.

A pleasant blend of amaretto and chocolate - reminds me of the chocolate amaretto cheesecake my grandmother makes. Don't take this scent too seriously. I like it for nights out at house parties, or anywhere it's okay for me to smell sweetly delicious. Consider CSP Vanille Amande if you're looking for something that smells more purely like amaretto.

To borrow a phrase from Chandler Burr, it smells quite simply like "ripely-scented" male genitals - a scent that's almost physically arousing. The fidelity to the original is remarkable.

I can't imagine why a woman would ever wear this scent. It seems designed to be worn by men, to attract sex partners in the most primal way possible. And in this regard, it's amazing.

I do agree, though, that the first 20 minutes are overpowered by cumin. It needs that time to settle into its true form.

Soap! It starts out just smelling like musk to me, but once the blackberry comes in a few minutes later, it smells exactly like the scent a hotel soap might have. I can't describe it any more succinctly than that. I agree that it's a very minimalistic fragrance, and it's very good at what it does. This is not what I'm looking for in a fragrance, though of course your mileage may vary.