Individual fragrances
the ones with no house here

This is an amazing fragrance, because it smells 1:1 with the balsamic vinegar of Modena (IGP). It is incredible how these people managed it. 1:1. Wow.

In the top, it is pure balsamic vinegar.

In the mid, it is replaced by cherry and some spices like cinnamon and maybe cloves. It becomes a little Christmassy in the mid.

On the dry down, it becomes smokier and sweeter. It isn’t mixed that well.

Something to note with this fragrance is that it progresses VERY VERY QUICKLY. The top lasts 30 seconds to a minute, the mid lasts about 5-10 minutes, and then the dry down is achieved within 50 minutes. The whole thing is gone by 3 hours.

This is a fragrance that if they managed to fix its longevity and make the character of each individual part of the pyramid last longer, it would be a feat unlike any other. I mean, recreating balsamic vinegar specifically from Modena is a feat as it is, but still, I do wish it lasted a bit longer.

I have also met the owners of the house, and they were as excited about their achievement as I was about the fact that there is a Modena balsamic vinegar fragrance. They were really nice, so shout out to them.

This is a brilliant fragrance. It is a fragrance that is sad and mournful, yet I can also frequently interpret it as being hopeful. This contrarian approach comes from the fact that it smells like wet flowers in the cold (of which the most prominent are the chrysanthemums and violets).

The sad and mournful perspective seems to be the most popular, as this fragrance does evoke that funerary melancholy: the smell of the tombstones, the patch of earth and the flowers brought out by the gentle rain. It is cold, and the skies are overcast. Someone is gone.

And the hopeful perspective is one of spring: when winter decides to retreat and the protests of the cold get louder and louder. Flowers bloom and the luster of the dewy violets appears testament to the fact that the rays of the sun have broken through the dense overcast skies of February. The smell of the earth and its contents is magnified by the gentle rains that fall; not maliciously, but to spite the white and gray. Winter is over, and spring is here.

The makeup of the hopeful perspective are three ingredients: the residual cold of the winter, the wonderful smell of blooming flowers, and the wet character of the rain and the earth. This is the perspective I prefer personally.

It is also a linear fragrance. It doesn’t change. Maybe I would say that it turns a little soapy if I were to be nitpicky, but otherwise no, it is linear. It is also incredibly simple, which makes it very enjoyable.

This smells like a whole biome present within some brown forest. It has the flora, the fauna and the setting itself too.

The fragrance is by no means linear, but I feel I would not be doing it justice to represent it on a 3 point pyramid of top mid and base; it contains so many things one could find in a forest that I would be at a loss to document them chronologically parallel to the development of this fragrance.

Overall, I can say, that this fragrance smells like the response of a forest to when it rains. You can smell the soil, the mushrooms, the rogue chamomile flowers and other herbs that grow by the footpath, the breeze that wafts through the spruce and cypress, the deer and other animals that go drink from a pond as well as the pond itself, the beehive and its wax and honey, and the resins of the trees. There is so much to this, and so much of which I probably have not mentioned.

If you think of a fragrance that is most holistically depicting a forest, this is easily the number one choice. In comparison to other works, such as the notable Murkwood by Pineward, this does not give you a snapshot of one moment in time in a forest, nor does it present you with an ideal version of what you would imagine a forest to smell like; no, this gives you the forest as is: vivid, raw and real.

It is aromatic, and dark, and bright, and pine-y, and complicated, and herbal, and green, and earthy, and animalic, and floral, and musky too. This is one of those fragrances that I genuinely to struggle to write anything about because of how much there is to say.

Incredible.

This Dior private line is a sweet and honeyed tobacco fragrance. As it opens, you get blasted with tobacco, peach and honey. It is generally quite linear, but some facets do fade in and out of existence, like the aforementioned peach, as well as citruses, hints of plum, and smoke (which is introduced a few minutes into the spray of the fragrance).

In my mind, this is a fragrance of one of those underground smoke lounges of the 80s or 90s, where gentleman would dress up in their 3-piece suits and play billiard together while discussing relevant sports events or politics. The rooms with the bison head mounted on the wall, and the ebony chairs that surround the lacquered table in the middle of the room. I can also see there being some painting, often ignored by the attending guests and host.

I can also see smelling as the inside of a speakeasy bar in London, somewhere where the access is known by a select few, whose tastes in tobacco and atmosphere have been curated over the past decade or so, and have led up to this exact smell.

Anyways; it is quite dense and yet has some airiness to it. The density comes from multifaceted tobacco, and the air comes from the smoke, the citruses and the plum. It is very sweet, but not in the conventional way that honey fragrances are, no. Instead, here the honey lends its sweetness to the tobacco and you end up with the illusion that the tobacco itself is what is sweet. From the honey, I noticed that there is very little to no wax character, which is a welcome subtraction. It is also very very warm and is one of those smells that makes you feel warm even when the temperature is way below cold.

It is a very pleasant and wearable fragrance, and I myself consider it to be my go-to for winter. Smell this one, why don’t you?

NOTE: Something to add is that the centerstage tobacco is a little more complex than the usual, and to my best of knowledge contains blond tobacco leaves, gris tabacco and the regular absolut. If there is more then I do not know.

Sweet and fruity! It smells like the best shampoo you will ever find. There is raspberry, green apple and violet made a little more fresher (and shampoo-y) with orange blossom. It is honestly really pleasant, and a way better version of something like Greenly by Parfums de Marley.

I can see why it is called flamenco: smelling this evokes the same emotions as when you are watching a flamenco show in Andalucía. The lights, the flashing red of the Flamenca, the rhythm of the botas flamencas against the hollow wooden stage, it is all there.

It is not a realistic recreation, because that would include sweat, and fire, and a lot less of the cute notes present in this formulation; no, this is the ideal version of it. If one were to participate in the dance and then draw it from memory in watercolour, this is what it would smell like: the colours smeared with the majority being taken over by the alluring red of the Flamenca. The act of painting drawing from the sweetness of a pleasant memory. (the fragrance is very sweet)

Generally speaking, it is non-linear; it turns denser, woodier and more musky as it progresses. Though, I find it important to note that this is a perfume that is affected by the macerating time and the temperature:

1. Maceration: this perfume changes DRASTICALLY when it sits on your shelf for some time. The first few months of spraying it, it lasts up to 4 hours if you’re lucky, and the character is mainly fresh. On the other hand, after a year or so of being on a shelf, this turns dense, sweet and can last for about 12-16 hours EASY.
2. Temperature: I find that in the summer, this is way fresher than in the winter. In the winter, it turns warm and dense.

This is a sunscreen fragrance, one which starts off with citruses, but quickly reveals facets of sweat and salt. It is a very true-to-summer as a sunscreen, and is really something you can imagine smelling if you did go to the French Riviera – the name nails it. It is a smell that evokes the life of the beach, rather than the lounging inactivity of high end luxury resorts: it is a smell of a shore full of occupied beach volleyball nets, and children playing with buckets making sandcastles, and the couples that brought rackets to play badminton, and the surfers who are almost out of sight on the far horizon.

I love this one because it is subtle too; it is not a fragrance that one would think is actually a fragrance. What I mean is that normally, if you spray yourself with ambroxan or oud, then no one will think that you smell like that naturally, but rather if you put on sunscreen, then it is a much more subtle way of smelling nice without having the effort of doing so be apparent. People won’t think twice about what it is that you are wearing, just that you simple “smell nice.”

It is non-linear, and as it progresses it does turn more salty and more ambroxide-y but I found this to be highly variable from skin to skin. On mine for example, I get a good 3 hours of lovely sunscreen before it turns to almost pure salt.

Made by Casa Goa, this is a fragrance that is inspired by the fog of London.

Top

On spray it is quite powdery and very orris-y and something that makes it feel wet and dense. It has a contrasting character of powdery from the orris and sharp from lavender. It does smell like the streets and byways of the city. It is cold in some sense, and it is also realistic. It smells like the scaffolding you might find, and the bricks that make up the houses and the road you are on alike.

Mid

Once it develops a little, it becomes quite a simple fougère; albeit it does include honey so there’s points for uniqueness there. It becomes a barbershop fragrance that is sweet and a little powdery. Also smoother than most other of its type. Maybe that’s because there is ylang-ylang, which would give it quite a milky texture.

Dry Down

When it dries down, it becomes a little boring, but still sweet and a little wet. I can still see this as being a London fragrance though; it is consistent in that regard.

Top 1

In the very beginning. It smells like burnt salmon barbecue. It has a distinct airiness that you would get if you over-seared salmon, it charred and you smelled the charred parts.

Top 2

The top of this has the DNA of wet smoke, the same way that Fumidus by Roma Profumum, albeit a little spicier and sweeter. It is not a complex sweetness, rather more so a simple vanillin.

Top 3

It loses quite a bit of the smoke character, and it starts smelling a little like nutmeg. There is also a notable leather facet here, which is also a top-note leather. The sweetness persists here

Mid

This did a 180 on the top note 2; and it became extremely pleasant. It is airy smoke; completely devoid of that aforementioned density. The vanillin was correct from earlier, it’s definitely there. Idk if there’s tonka. This is really cool.

Base

It becomes quite transparent.