Mystique Bouquet (Afnan)

"The 1960s Called and Wants its Catherine Deneuve Back . . ."

I'm told there's a bit of a backstory as to how this fragrance was created, something about Quentin Bisch winning so much with Ex Nihilo's Fleur Narcotique (2014) that Parfums de Marly asked him to self-flatter in the original Valaya (2023). But how Imran Fazlani's 2024 creation fits into that situation is beyond me. I've gleaned that these fragrances represent a newer style of florals unique to the '20s. At least, that's the take on Fragrantica. My take is different. In any case, Mystique Bouquet smells a lot like Valaya in the first two minutes—like, a lot. But then it goes even further in a surprising direction.

There are some clones out there where you smell them and tell yourself, okay, this smells like fragrance X in the top and mid, but the base is totally different. Then there's clones where you smell the original and then smell the dupe, and you're like, Christ, there's no point in wearing the original anymore. Enter Mystique Bouquet: Fazlani took the intensely synthetic dryer-sheet musk explosion of Valaya and reinterpreted its chemical cacophony as a French chypre from the 1900s with a contemporary sheen of Ambroxan. At heart, the scent structure here is the sort of thing a sexy French woman in 1967 woud wear, and the old-school feel shimmers through in a very classical, wonderful way. But that's not the only thing that grabs me about it. My heart opens to Mystique Bouquet in its first hour, because that's when I get hit in the face by a massive wallop of regular 'ol oakmoss. And the kicker is it's not even listed on the box (although it does appear in the pyramid).  

When you've worn as many fragrances as I have, you know that oakmoss has a lung feel to it. There's a body and heft to it that can sometimes impart a heaviness to the air you breathe. It's here in this fragrance, and enough of it that I know it can't possibly be IFRA compliant. It isn't some hypoallergenic version of oakmoss. It's vintage Mitsouko-moss. Combined with an intensely radiant bergamot/peach accord, a bleached bouquet of squeaky-clean white florals, cistus labdanum, a big grassy-green note, and a salty base of multilayered white musks, Mystique Bouquet far outdoes Valaya (piss poor in comparison) for roughly a quarter of the price. Plus it comes in a gorgeous bottle and box, so kudos to Afnan for once again blowing me away on all fronts in the quality department. 

Lecture Time: How Olivier Creed's Death Hits the Fragcomm, & What His Legacy Gives Us . . .

Park Your Carcass, Kid. I'd Like A Word.

Olivier Creed died about a week ago from an undisclosed cause, and this hit me. My first thought upon learning of his passing was, do people realize what he gave us? 

I'd like to take a moment to cut through the bullshit that has surrounded Olivier Creed and his brand for decades now. It kind of started after Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez published The Guide (2008) and insinuated in not-so-opaque language that Creed was a fraud. With snarky reviews and faint praise for even established classics like Green Irish Tweed and Bois du Portugal, the duo's appraisal amounted to an indictment of quality and character that to this day feels spiteful, mean-spirited, and unjustified. 

After The Guide, it became de rigeur to act like you were "too good" for Creed fragrances. In January of 2014, The Candy Perfume Boy wrote:

"I have a turbulent relationship with the house of CREED. They are definitely on the pricey side for what they are and their quality can be a bit hit or miss, but it would be unfair to say that none of their scents are worth seeking out."

This left me rolling my eyes. Then, a few years later, I read his river of glaze for Prerogative, the Britney Spears celebuscent. His fawning over her and the fragrance made me think he was taking the piss. It would be "unfair" to say none of the Creeds are worth seeking out. Why, thank you, Candy Perfume Boy, how genteel of you to admit Creed into your teeny-bopper club. I suppose one can find solace in knowing that knife-wielding, raccoon-eyed Britney Spears—yes, that's your girl—calms your turbulence. 

But it wasn't just the Candy Perfume Boy. Every other blogger had some dismissive or trite word for Olivier and his fragrances. There was always a gripe: price too high (yet just fine for far clunkier brands like Maître Parfumeur et Gantier and Etat Libre d'Orange), marketing a lie (and nobody bats an eyelash when Parfums de Marly staples a wizened date on its masthead), or inspiration too dry (Green Irish Tweed is very old-school, but Mitsouko, well, Mitsouko . . . ), there was always a reason to crap on Creed. 

So let's cut the bullshit. Was Guerlain a god-seed brand, as Luca Turin is wont to characterize it? For the 20th century, particularly the first 60 years, yes. But times change. Tastes shift. And in the final chapter of the millennium, it wasn't Jean-Paul Guerlain who permanently shifted the direction of masculine perfumery for the 21st century. It was Olivier Creed. Not Pierre Bourdon. Olivier. Creed.

Let's get something straight here. The perfume industry isn't just about the perfumer. Creativity is a driving but also distracting force, and when dealing with things as delicate and temperamental as scent and its finest finesses, it takes an evaluator to recognize the winning timbre, and a businessman to put it in people's hands. Olivier Creed delivered on both counts. The suits at Lancôme weren't smart enough to recognize the genius in Bourdon's submission for Sagamore? Had it ended there, Green Irish Tweed would not exist. It was Creed's commiseration with the jilted perfumer that brought it to life. The fragrance went from "green beans" (Chantal Roos, YSL) to masterpiece. Olivier looks bad? Imagine being YSL right now. Jazz is discontinued, and was never nearly as popular as its close contemporaries, GIT and Cool Water. Do the math.

What Gabe Oppenheim left out of his clumsily-written book, The Ghost Perfumer: Creed, Lies, & The Scent of the Century (2021), even as he derided Olivier for "stealing" the formula, is that Pierre Bourdon never came up with dusky ambergris in the base. 

That's Creed's signature accord. It's what makes GIT. It is, more than perhaps any other contemporary perfume of the last 50 years, a fragrance about the base. And I'm not talking the post-2013 reformulations of GIT that gradually stripped out the sandalwood and natural ambergris tinctures. I'm talking the 1990s and 2000s formula, which I've smelled, and which boasted the richest, smoothest sandalwood base I have ever encountered in a perfume, including Guerlain's classics—and it isn't particularly close. Even Turin had the decency to at least grudgingly admit the fragrance was brilliant. 

Oppenheim, by the way, characterizes Creed's adjustments to Bourdon's formula as "modified, because Olivier would sometimes take the ingredients Pierre recommended and replace them with the most expensive version of those ingredients," a rare devotion to quality for the consumer summed up with: "Olivier had no idea how to meet a perfumer's budget but he couldn't have cut costs even if he'd wanted to, according to a [conveniently anonymous] source." His sentence doesn't even make much sense, but I glean from it that Oppenheim believes Bourdon's formula was at risk in Creed's hands. 

So, in cutting the bullshit, no, Pierre Bourdon is not the only perfumer who created Green Irish Tweed. He supplied the original formula, and with that there is no argument. But Creed then took the original formula, and subsequent iterations, and figured out which one worked. He then crafted the specific base, by choosing the specific base materials over the recommendations of Bourdon (excluding him from that particular process) and fitted it to the novel, post-Drakkar Noir opening and gusty-floral heart of the scent. Clearly, by Oppenheim's own account, Olivier had a heavy hand in the making of Green Irish Tweed, and why wouldn't he? Creeds of that era all shared the "Creed Water" base, comprised of a precarious balance between natural ambergris, salty-synthetic ambergris, expensive musks, subtle florals, and precious woods. 

To a degree, Olivier Creed was a perfumer. In keeping with my cut-the-bullshit approach to the man, I'd like to point out that there were perfumes that he solely authored. Its isn't clear exactly which (accounts differ), but if you know enough Creeds, you can spot which among the complex masterpieces smell relatively "minor," and make an educated guess. I'd hazard that Tabaróme Millésime and Love in Black are Olivier creations. To my knowledge there have been no attributions to the contrary (not that the brand is very forthcoming) and Tabaróme smells like a proto-Bleu fragrance with little more than ginger, citrus, green tea, a dab of hay-bale coumarin, and amber comprising its lithe structure, frankly smelling like the work of a man who "dabbles" in the art without actually committing to it. Likewise, in LiB, the overall feel is of a fragrance made by someone who took a 20th century violet toilet water and simply amped it up with the best violet and irone materials money can buy. Another trademark of Creed's personal style: simple elegance that frankly any amateur with an unlimited budget could pull off.

I won't eulogize Mr. Creed here, because I did not know him personally. The man's many foibles are on record, and I recognize them for what they were. Yes, he fibbed in the marketing copy. As does literally every other market manager for a niche perfume brand. And no, it has never been established that Olivier fabricated his family's history in the perfume industry. There was no perfume industry in Creed's salad years, so logically (and yes logic eludes Creed critics on this point) there is no way to disprove or verify Olivier's claims to family formulas and centuries of parfumeur lineage. Bespoke perfumery typically leaves literal record-keeping breadcrumbs, and until someone proffers a convincing explanation as to how Olivier was able to create a hit-after-hit range of impeccably—and classically—tailored Grey Cap EDTs, (and no, one does not pull that many beautiful fragrances out of his ass), they are the only breadcrumbs to follow. 

My observation of how Olivier Creed's death has impacted the community is filled with sadness. Yes, there are numerous farewells that acknowledge the beauty Creed brought into our world, and their sentiments are noted with warmth. However, the staccato of Gen-Zombie insults peppers the condolences with a salt of nastiness unlike anything I've ever seen before. What the hell is wrong with you people? This one dimwit who goes by the moniker "gezakolab" continuously harangues the Fragrantica obit with senseless comments about how Olivier "scammed all his life." 

Social justice keyboard warrioring against a dead man because you read a crappy book is just pathetic. Despite others imploring him to recognize that there's a time and place, he had to keep adding his digs. 

Then there's "50shadesofscent," another loser, who writes, "We let him rest, we just don't care about him" . . . which is a weird and ugly thing to say when someone has just died. I mean, it's a take. If you don't care about him, then . . . what are you doing in the comments of the Fragrantica obit for him? What have you, anonymous keyboard warrior, contributed to the fragrance world that qualifies your opinion of Olivier Creed in death over that of his hundreds of thousands of fans? Name one thing. But you won't, because you're a disgusting little turd who hides her face behind an avatar and an ugliness, the only things you can show the world, or what little of it wants to see you. 

There have been some readers of mine who have messaged me privately to applaud my stance on Creed and the company as a whole, and they have rightly pointed out that nobody has ever just said the thing with receipts to show for it: Olivier Creed stole people's intellectual property and defrauded them of millions of dollars over the course of his career. If you want to say that, just say it. Stop hiding behind snarky innuendo, dismissive attitudes, acting like you're above appreciating a brand because you heard some random things that you've chosen to believe. Everybody says stuff like, "Creed stole the formula . . . aaaand he edited it and inserted expensive materials, and evaluated multiple iterations of the formula (because he was an amazing evaluator), and then decided this was the one he would release, this fragrance that has sold hundreds of thousands of bottles over 40 years, and nobody could legally stop him because, well, nobody wanted to." 

There have also been readers of mine who have cited Oppenheim's recalling of Bourdon's testimony to him. Bourdon does, according to Oppenheim, outright state that Olivier Creed stole from him. But the question is, how exactly did Bourdon put that? Was it a casual French quip made by a quirky elderly perfumer who was obsessed with the dihydromyrcenol-fueled violet/iris profile of GIT, and to an even greater extent, Cool Water? Or was it really the teary-eyed regret-filled rant of someone who feels deeply wronged, and if so, where is the follow-up to that? Where is the meat on the bones of "Creed stole from me" that any wronged perfumer would gladly hand up? Nowhere in Oppenheim's book does Bourdon say anything like, "Olivier Creed stole my formula, and here's how hard I tried to make things right." 

No. In fact, Bourdon's testimony recollects the opposite: after supposedly getting ripped off with GIT, he did the obvious thing for revenge and offered the cheater Silver Mountain Water and Millésime Impérial as well, allowing Olivier to steal from him twice more and continue "scamming" the public. 

Make it make sense. 

Olivier Creed's legacy is rich and grossly underrated. While people like Luca Turin bang on about the dusty and casually-glossed-over antisemitic legacies of the Guerlains and Chanels, Olivier Creed, who has fundamentally shaped the modern perfume landscape in ways that are too numerous to count (there would be no Sauvage if Aventus had not been commissioned), goes relatively neglected and unnoticed. You can always tell when someone has never smelled Green Valley, for instance. They'll mourn the loss of Samsara, and opine on the beauty of 31 Rue Cambon, and then say something like, "Oh, Creed? Eh." Nobody who has ever seriously worn Green Valley has ever said "Eh" about Creed.

Olivier leaves us Green Valley, the finest fragrance I have ever encountered, as well as a bevy of other, mostly older fragrances, many of which are now discontinued. The IFRA was the final nail in classical Creed's coffin, securing draconian regulatory liens against the production of practically every Grey Cap Creed and the earliest stabs at the "Millésime" range, before it was a thing. I'm nursing a bottle of vintage 2005 Fleurissimo, which today smells like a bouquet of heavily-salted tuberose, because it was the one Creed that Olivier would hold up in advertising photos, glad to let the sunlight glint like gold from its yellow-hued liquid. Fleurissimo is another flawless example of what Creed offered us in his legacy, that rarest of things: a commitment to giving the customer the very best, no expense spared. How many founding fathers of major niche brands think that way today? Precious few. 

People bitch about profit being the sole driving force behind many of today's releases, and they're not wrong; the perfume industry of the '20s is hellbent on taking ethyl-maltol and ethyl-vanillin and slapping $250 tags on them. They forget that back in the late 1960s, there was a young man who wanted to drive up his own margins to nearly-unbearable levels, just so his customers could feel like they were wearing something unique, unforgettable, special. Scoff if you want to, that's fine. But the day will come when some teenager will happen across a bottle of unused and untouched Fleurissimo, and after one wearing will hit the Reddit boards and bro forums to ask, unironically, "Why don't any of my girlfriend's perfumes smell this good?" 

The silence in response will be deafening.

One Man Show Emerald Edition (Jacques Bogart)

One of the neat things about being a collector is finding "rare" items, and perfume collectors are especially driven by scarcity. I've been on the lookout for One Man Show Emerald Edition since its release 8 years ago, but for whatever reason it's always been tough to source. Apparently Emerald was initially a Dubai exclusive, then trickled into Europe, and eventually got swept into the grey market, which the Bogart Group uses to unofficially distribute its wares to the continent. Recently a few inexpensive bottles appeared on eBay, and I was on it. 

Emerald Edition is an unusual one. Corinne Cachen has been in the game for a while now, and has at least one foot in the "old-school" world of green, spicy-woody frags. See Montblanc Presence (2001) and Avon Surreal Garden (2007) for just two mainstream examples. Emerald opens with a lick of sugary sweetness that is swiftly overtaken by a rush of what smells to me like a "sandpaper accord" commonly found in pre-millennium masculines: ginger & white pepper-adjacent elemi resin (150-180 grit), sage (sclarene), and the most bitter rendition of methyl heptine carbonate (violet leaf) Cachen could possibly use. Violet flower appears in an abstract and very contemporary form, resembling Mancera's Aoud Violet a bit for at least twenty minutes or so, but then a potent nutmeg and desiccated coumarin emerge, lending earth-hued shadow to the grey-green fog. Still spicy, a little woody, a little green thanks to the lingering violet/violet leaf aspect, and with that sclarene really piercing through everything, Emerald settles on dusty nutmeg and a dry-resinous tapestry of violet, cedar, salty musks, and Bogart Group's version of Akigalawood.

One thing nobody mentions is there's ethyl maltol in this fragrance. It's blended in so carefully that unless the juice in the atomizer stem was allowed to get old enough (as in my bottle), you won't smell it clearly save for during the first one or two sprays until the stuff balances out. I'll end with this: Emerald Edition is worth seeking out if you're a hopeless lover of green and agrestic masculines from any decade, and if you're okay with smelling like a 51 year-old man who just stepped out of 1997. This particular Bogart won't turn heads or be remembered, but it's definitely a mature and serviceable men's offering, and I'm glad I have it, if only for how hard it is to find these days.

Angham (Lattafa)

This fragrance was a bit of a "hypebeast" phenom for the Reddit and YouTube crowd when it was released in 2024, and continues to enjoy massive popularity with the under-thirty set particularly. Lattafa is a reputable Dubai-based concern known for their florid packaging and commercial success in duping designer and niche brands, and yet Angham is a Lattafa oddity, in that it seems to be its own thing entirely. I find it refreshing to encounter a fragrance by this brand that isn't overwhelmingly duping or modding something else. Sometimes a little originality is needed. 

The hype was based on a widespread perception that Angham was a dupe of Burberry Goddess (2023), with countless influencers rumoring its likeness as being nearly 1:1 with Amandine Clerc-Marie's creation. However, poke a bit deeper into the chattering morass, and you'll find a fair number of people who either unwittingly debunk the comparison, or outright declare that Angham isn't really close to Goddess at all. Having only smelled Angham, it's tough for me to weigh in definitively, but I can say this: Angham does not really match the pyramid or stated impressions of Goddess, from what I can smell. Goddess is apparently a punchy lavender-forward floral that warms into a smooth vanilla base, with hints of cocoa and ginger, while Angham is gingery-citrus with a velvety floral-vanilla drydown. I get a linalool lavender (reconstruction) with a very brief snap of super-light citrus and transparent ginger in the opening accord, which rapidly segues into a nondescript non-gourmand vanilla base, and it's linear for the remaining twelve hours on skin and fabric. Ethyl-maltol is definitely in the mix, as are a blend of woody musks that manage to oscillate between floral and synth-sandalwood, the kind of lizard-brain-says-expensive sweetness that could not offend if it tried. Projection is so-so.

If you're after an undeniably classy crowd-pleasing vanilla perfume, Angham is a solid option, albeit a boring one. I'm sorry, but vanilla is vanilla. Of more interest to me is the marketing angle Lattafa took with this stuff. For one thing, they named it after Egypt's biggest female radio star, which kind of makes Angham a "celebuscent" even if Angham herself has nothing to do with it. The brand leans into this by attaching a chromed metal musical staff imprinted with notes and a G-clef, a design that extends onto the chromed metal cap. Great idea, but one problem—the little square in the center with the fragrance's name makes the whole thing look like a big Band-Aid. The line of the cap's base meeting the bottle even matches the spot where you pull and peel before applying to a minor wound. A textbook case of a good idea badly executed.

Jicky EDP (Guerlain/Les Légendaires Collection)

Let's talk about Jicky. 

Here's the thing.

Jicky's reputation precedes it, and there have been approximately 889,000 internet reviews of Jicky written in the past 26 years. I don't need to get into how Aimé Guerlain created the world's first abstract perfume in 1889 using more than one entirely synthetic material (De Laire's coumarin and vanillin). I don't need to mention that up until very recently, Jicky was the oldest preserved (not hugely fucked with) perfume still available to buy new. Guerlain has apparently discontinued it, but hey, it had a good run. And I really don't need to mention that Jicky holds the original "Guerlinade" that the house would infuse into nearly every major release thereafter. It's an "oriental fougère," the very first of that breed. 

Since I don't need to mention any of that, let's get into the issue I have with Jicky in its latest, and probably last incarnation. I own a bottle of the "Les Légendaires" heart-stoppered EDP, pictured above. This version is, according to Thierry Wasser, Guerlain's master perfumer, a faithful reconstruction of the original 1889 formula, as it would have smelled, vs. how subsequent 20th century reformulations of Jicky smelled. Wasser's angle is that Jicky was animalic, but not that animalic, and was really more about showcasing the two synthetics pioneered by Aimé. Indeed, the fragrance reads to my nose as more fresh than fierce; I'm pleased by the brisk but delicate sunshine-in-the-morning lavender accord that introduces this fragrance, and impressed by how it's couched in gentle brushings of basil and rosemary, the former of which is shockingly evident throughout Jicky's considerable 14+ hour lifespan on skin and fabric. (Was Aimé Italian?)

This all dries very gradually into the base, with barely any heart notes, save for a whisper of nondescript florals that literally breeze into a foundational and everlasting civetone-laced coumarin and vanillin. The coumarin is gentle, hay-like, semisweet and balsamic, the finest and possibly best balanced coumarin that I've ever smelled. Wedded to that is the cushy sweetness of the vanillin, but conjoining the two is that infamous animalic rasp. I'm puzzled by the rasp, because more than a few reviewers seem to find Jicky, even in this formula, borderline unwearable for having too much civet. I, however, sense barely any. It could be my nose, or perhaps it's simply a musk component that jumps out at some noses and not at others, and I'm one of the lucky chosen who can happily wear Jicky. 

Whatever the case may be, it's a tremendously pleasant and enduring fragrance, but my issue with it is that I want the animalic component to be more pronounced. For that matter, I want everything to be more pronounced. "But Bryan," you shout, "This is Jicky, so take it or leave it!" Well, not so fast. It may be that Jicky is set in stone, and it's unreasonable to expect anything but what I get from it. If I want an even brighter, smoother, and more penetrating lavender, I'm out of luck, right? If I find the sedate blush of barnyard hay in its base too evanescent, I can kick rocks, correct? Wrong. I have a fragrance that delivers in these departments, and yet smells about 95% similar to Wasser's Jicky: Ungaro pour L'Homme II (1992). 

Jacques Polge's 1990s entry in the Ungaro masculine line says, "I'm like Jicky, only more so." Bigger, more lucid lavender. Heavier civet, right from the outset. A bold, coumarinic-ambery quality that speaks to more recent contemporaries like Brut, while also nodding to Guerlain. Vanilla, just as restrained, and folded into more tangible wood accords, i.e., rosewood and sandalwood. Ungaro II is the logical reconfiguration of Aimé's 19th century masterpiece. Take all the good ideas, blow them up, rebalance everything to scale, and voila! If you want what Jicky actually smelled like when it was first released, you can now have it. Just don't tell anyone. For all intents and purposes, this is just another in a long line of "fougèriental" masculines pushed into department stores for mass consumption. (Except it's actually an educated remake of the original Jicky . . . don't tell anyone.) 

Wasser can claim that his formula is closest to what Jicky once was, but I'm not entirely buying it. Sure, the fragrance is gorgeous. The lavender is crystalline, the herbal notes are like fine porcelain accords brushed with tender love and care, and the "purr" of animalism in the semisweet base is fun to wear. But the 19th century formulas used more naturals, and probably more real musks. The early forms of coumarin and vanillin were, from what I've read, a bit cruder and louder than the stuff being used today. And if Guerlain wanted people to notice this very first abstract composition—as in, not just representing literal flowers—he would want it to sing. People were stinky in the years before deodorant soap. Perfume was the answer, but it was, by sheer necessity, stern about it.

I encourage you to grab a bottle of Jicky while you still can. It doesn't show up on Guerlain's website, and the rumor is that it's been canned. Who knows if that's true. But I'd also warn you, if you're looking to drop $150+ on a vintage bottle of Jicky: Perhaps take a moment to reconsider. You can spend the same big dollars and buy Ungaro II, and I promise you, you're essentially getting the same fragrance with more balls, and also frankly more dynamism. Ungaro II smells like it contains real civet, although I doubt it does. The current Guerlain does not, that is certain. If you're looking for something like Jicky, but richer, then you're looking for Polge's fragrance. Just be ready to pay for it.

Of course, you could always just buy a vintage, or even "deep" vintage bottle of Jicky, which by many accounts has a much more fecal civet note in it. I could do the same, but my issue there is with Guerlain's unpredictability. This stuff isn't available to sample, especially in vintage form. Finding a truly satisfying vintage means picking through 137 years of formulas, spanning literally dozens of different bottle types, with all sorts of concentrations, and I'd probably have better luck playing lotto tickets. 

Jicky has a superior lavender note, of that there's no doubt. But Ungaro's lavender is pretty damn close, and as I mentioned before, it's brighter, louder, and richer. So, if you're a vintage hound, and you're not sure where to start with Jicky, Ungaro is your one-and-done shortcut. No multiple formulas (Ungaro II had one run), no weird bottles and concentrations to pick through (Ungaro comes only in EDT concentration), and no b.s. with the civet (Ungaro's civet is no joke). I'll let you decide which road to take.  

Victoria (Lattafa)

Basic Victorian Bitch

There's fine perfumery, and then there's Basic Bitch Juice. 

Let me make the distinction: fine perfumery entails the complex and abstract blending of accords that, when conjoined a certain way, create something moving on both a sexual and intellectual level. Think Catherine Deneuve, who mainly wore Mitsouko, and picture her nude in a bathtub in Pola X (1999). Mitsouko = Not that Basic. 

Basic Bitch Juice is bright-fruity meets intense, sugar rush vanilla, followed by six hundred sprays and an influencer vid gushing about the compliments she gets wearing it. Sweet, saccharine, edible, evoking only calories and candy. In other words, even a coma patient would find it agreeable, but nobody finds it particularly interesting.

Such is Lattafa's Victoria. It's trashy in a good way. Often compared to lemon meringue, I think it smells closer to vanilla-frosted shortbread lemon squares baked by a chef with a fondness for ethyl maltol. I smell Victoria and immediately think, "Basic Bitch." 

She never stopped celebrating her "dirty thirty." She shops at Poshmark. Spends $150 a week on Starbucks. Pulls her hair up in severe ponytails all day, every day, instead of just getting a pixie cut. Melts for other people's dogs but shudders at the thought of having children. And she exclusively wears perfumes that smell like cotton candy. It doesn't smell good to her if it isn't identical to what she can stuff in her face and feel guilty about as she goes for seconds. Hell, she's even named Victoria.

With all of that said, I should be fair to Victoria (the perfume); while it won't win awards for originality, it should get noticed for being incredibly well made, and well heeled. The box is studded with leather siding meant to resemble the corinthian style of Victorian fainting couches, and frankly it looks great. The faux marble patina on the box and bottle evoke cold marble staircases and gothic horror. If I didn't know better, I'd look at it and think I was in for a dusty rose chypre. Instead, the fragrance opens with a pert blend of fizzy lemon aldehyde and d-limonene, which I feel leans into an orange character as it dries, with distinct nuances of neroli and petitgrain lending greenness and depth. Maybe a careful dose of something like valencene is in there. Clearly they were going for a Meyer lemon, and they did a fair job. This smells convincingly edible-citrus. 

Eventually, a pastry-like accord shows up, and this is where the fragrance begins to resemble a graham-cracker-crusted lemon square to me. Its subtle florals still wisp along in the background, undergirded by an ever-present ethyl-maltol sugary sweetness that is probably the only annoying aspect of this thing, at least in its first hour. As a creamy vanilla accord wells up in the base, this spun-sugar effect begins to cohere better, and by the five hour mark, it's basically a great big fluffy vanilla with a halo of candied lemon. Projection is modest and longevity is longer than a CVS receipt, so you'll get a work day and then some out of it. Victoria is both fresh and warm, another plus, as it works well in both winter and summer. It's like a splicing of traditional lemon cologne and vanilla cookie candle, or perhaps just the cookies, an unadorned and direct gourmand. 

It does smell good, overall. There's no arguing that. And the floral facets of neroli and petitgrain do inject some much-needed sophistication into an otherwise Basic scent profile. The vanilla is very foody and overly sweet, what with the ethyl maltol and whatever other candy flavoring is in there, and you really have to like gourmands to wear this on a regular basis. Not entirely my thing, but every once in a very blue moon, I get the urge to wear a good vanilla, and Victoria is definitely a good vanilla. To me, personally, it reads as a serviceable post-shave fragrance that strays well over the border of common 20th century citrus-vanilla barbershop tropes, and thus is worth having around. I find it works pretty well with Limacol aftershave/cologne splash, which basically smells like one-note mentholated Meyer lemon (and is severely underrated imo). 

It's a quality perfume, but it leaves me wondering, why? Who briefed this thing? Who woke up one day and said, "Lattafa, you must clone Dolce&Gabbana's Devotion, and put a Caffè Sicilia spin on it!"  Then gussy it up with cod Victoriana and a blue-marbled bottle that looks like a prop from a Roger Corman film. Why, Lattafa? Why?