Linen Vetiver (Banana Republic)

The Banana Republic Icon Collection fragrances, the originals in the black boxes produced by Gap’s sister brand, are increasingly difficult to find. These scents aren’t budget buys -- retailing around $100, with online prices hovering near $45. For deals, discount retailers like Marshalls, Ross, and Burlington often stock them at roughly $20 for a 75 ml bottle. Recently, my local stores have had an abundance of Dark Cherry & Amber, Gardenia & Cardamom, and Cypress Cedar, with occasional sightings of 06 Black Platinum. However, 90 Pure White, Linen Vetiver, and 78 Vintage Green are becoming scarce, especially Vintage Green. Fortunately, I recently scored a bottle of Linen Vetiver, and it’s a standout fragrance.

It's good because it's obviously an unused mod of Julien Rasquinet's Asian Green Tea, released by Creed in 2014. It opens with a lively bergamot and petitgrain accord, tinged with a spiced sweetness that evokes crab apple. This apple-like note lingers, framing the scent with subtle fruitiness. The heart reveals a blend of iris, hyacinth, and watery jasmine, closely mirroring Asian Green Tea’s profile. Despite its name, Linen Vetiver lacks vetiver, making it a remarkable, streamlined take on what Creed could have achieved with a simpler floral chypre. The vetiver-shaped hole instead of the note suggests that Banana Republic’s perfume team has a wry sense of humor, repurposing a potential Creed scent with a nod to Olivier’s habit of naming fragrances after absent ingredients.

The key distinction lies in Linen Vetiver’s lack of a tea note, relying entirely on its florals to carry the composition—a choice that works beautifully. In Creed’s version, the tea note felt sharp and astringent, almost celery-like, as my mother once noted. Banana Republic’s decision to focus on the floral structure, sweetened by a green apple haze, results in a fresh, mass-appealing fragrance. It’s unclear why Creed passed on this formulation, but their loss is my gain. At Banana Republic’s accessible price point, Linen Vetiver is a gem I’ll happily keep in my rotation for years to come.

Cypress Cedar (Banana Republic)

In recent years, I've come to embrace perfume as a gateway to Zen. I seek fragrances that feel meditative, compositions that soothe the body and spirit into stillness. It turns out that the powerhouse chypres and fougères of the seventies, eighties, and even early nineties rarely offer that kind of serenity. Their dense arrangements of caustic fruits, pungent woods, intense musks, and heavy spices feel more theatrical than tranquil. When I want to feel at peace, I reach for scents with softer textures, muted tones, and a calm connection to nature. These are perfumes that don’t shout from the bottle but instead whisper gently, inviting quiet rather than commanding attention.

Cypress Cedar is one such fragrance. Interestingly, the perfumer behind it remains unnamed, a rarity for Banana Republic’s Icon Collection. Often compared to Terre d'Hermès (2006), Cypress Cedar offers a greener, quieter experience. Where Terre d'Hermès leans into orange, grapefruit, and a mineral flint heart, Cypress Cedar plays with bergamot, lemon, and a touch of spearmint for a brisk opening. It introduces rhubarb in the mid-notes, offering a green twist before settling into a base of cedar, vetiver, patchouli, and white musk. The result is less fiery than its Hermès counterpart, lacking the warmth of benzoin and black pepper, but delivering a sense of cool restraint. It won’t dazzle in a crowd, but it might leave you feeling unexpectedly grounded and calm, like a well-tended bonsai on a windowsill.

Fragrances like this are about simplicity and intention, creating accords that stay true to their promise. Like Jo Malone or Yardley offerings, Cypress Cedar doesn't aim to surprise, but it offers quiet depth. There's a chance the perfumer used Iso E Super in a style reminiscent of Jean-Claude Ellena, with a nod to the aesthetic of a Japanese pebble garden. The citrus notes aren't Guerlain quality, but they avoid the sharpness of cheap aldehydes. They smell fresh, juicy, and green—an ideal setup for what follows. The woody notes are smooth and never get too deep or funky. This is what Montblanc Starwalker wanted to be: a cool, misty morning in a grove of cypress, where tension dissolves in the hush of rustling branches. Not extraordinary, but quietly beautiful.

Dark Cherry & Amber (Banana Republic): A Claude Dir Mod for Creed's Carmina?

When I was in high school, one of my so-called friends regularly invited me and a few others for rides in his 1980 Cadillac de Ville. He wasn't so much a friend as he was an experience: he wore the original Aramis, chain-smoked Marlboro Reds, chewed Wrigley’s Winterfresh gum, and when he wasn’t drinking cheap beer, he clung to Cherry Coke like it was an endangered elixir. Occasionally, he’d offer me a can. I almost always declined. Cherry Coke, for all its cultish charm, never resonated with me—its cherry flavor felt like a rumor, faint and unconvincing. It wasn’t just the soda. Cherries, whether eaten, scented, or artificially flavored, have always felt elusive to me, like an ephemeral note in a song I couldn’t quite catch. Even into adulthood, cherries remain little more than a passing suggestion, an essence that flits and fades before it takes root. This curious shortfall in my sensory lexicon is particularly relevant when it comes to Dark Cherry & Amber.

Cherry, as a perfumery note, has long been one I approach with caution. Tom Ford’s indulgent maraschino cherry fragrance, which I reviewed in January, was an exception, registering with clarity and punch. Joop! Homme, for all its brash artificiality, blares its cherry note with unapologetic gusto. Beyond those two, my encounters with cherry scents have been sparse. Enter Dark Cherry & Amber, a fragrance whispered about in perfumery circles as a hidden gem, praised for its quality at a modest price. For years, I’d spotted it at Burlington Coat Factory, an unassuming presence on the discount shelves. But then came Creed’s Carmina in 2023, and Dark Cherry & Amber seemed to vanish overnight, its elusive reputation only growing. The buzz around Carmina suggested it was an upscale reimagining of Claude Dir’s 2019 composition for Banana Republic. That theory gained traction when Derek (aka Varanis Ridari) likened the two with the assertiveness of a Brooklyn chess hustler. After I read his theory, finding a bottle of Dark Cherry & Amber became an obsession. Fifteen months later, my search finally bore fruit today, at a Burlington in Orange, Connecticut.

Of course, I have a problem: I’ve never smelled Carmina, so I can’t confirm the comparison. Still, there are clues. A user on Fragrantica, “ayshee_x,” described Carmina shortly after its release: 

“Smells kind of nostalgic, like cherry lip gloss and plastic but also floral and musky. There are better cherry perfumes out there that are cheaper. Banana Republic Dark Cherry & Amber is a great alternative and a fraction of the cost.” 

At twenty dollars, Dark Cherry & Amber certainly wins on price. But what about the scent? It opens with a juicy, lifelike cherry note that eschews the romanticized maraschino of Tom Ford for something startlingly natural. It’s as if someone bit into a ripe Bing cherry and waved it under my nose—your everyday table cherry, unvarnished and unadorned. While this might sound uninspired, Dir leans into its simplicity, rendering it strikingly authentic for the first hour. There’s a dusky, sweet-tart fruitiness to the note, accompanied by a faintly soapy “off” quality that mirrors the idiosyncrasies of an actual cherry. It’s an impressive feat for a fragrance at this price point, the Tea Rose of cherry perfumes.

After that start, the cherry begins to retreat, making way for a smooth, luminous vanilla amber. On paper, the amber reads as floral—cherry blossom, perhaps—while on skin it veers toward a warmth reminiscent of praline, though it never fully commits to gourmand territory. Beneath this lies a subtle woodiness, like a watercolor wash of sweet blossoms and watery cedar. The effect is delicate, almost ethereal, and I can’t help but wonder how many high-end niche houses passed on this gem before Banana Republic picked it up. At its core, Dark Cherry & Amber doesn’t pretend to be lavish. It doesn’t aim for the baroque richness of ultra-luxury niche brands. Instead, it offers something far more elusive: clarity. A lucidity that reminds me of my old Cherry Coke dilemma. Just as I struggled to taste the fruit in the soda, I find the cherry here to be restrained, a gentle presence rather than a cloying shout. I sense its tartness, its juiciness, but it often lingers at the edge of perception, never overwhelming. 

And that’s precisely why it works. Had the cherry screamed for attention, it might have felt cheap, like a budget air freshener cherry. Instead, it whispers, and in that quiet confidence lies its charm.

Tuberose Overdose (Banana Republic)

Banana Republic's intriguing subcategorization strategy is thus far successful, but questionable. The Icon Collection is apparently a line the brand wants consumers to view as more prestigious and "luxe" than stuff like M and Black Walnut. The Classic Collection is really just one fragrance, Banana Republic Classic (1995), and a bunch of recent flankers like Classic Acqua and Classic Red. What's up with that? Then there's the small, three-fragrance Collezione Riservata, which is Italian for Reserved Collection, and includes Midnight Hour, Velvet Pomegranate, and Tuberose Overdose. Are these reserved for people who just want more Icon Collection bottles in fancier colors? In my quest to better understand tuberose, at least in perfumery terms, and in the wake of acquiring a bottle of the supposedly tuberose-rich Fleurissimo by Creed, I sprang for Christelle Laprade's 2022 floral, mindful that it would be a modern version of what is classically represented in the upmarket niche perfume. Cost is not a consideration here.

I think I'm starting to get what tuberose is in perfume. I've seen phrases like "it smells like bubblegum" and "kinda banana" get bandied around online in reference to the flower, and Tuberose Overdose smells intensely floral but also incredibly sweet, and is a hybrid of creamy banana-like nectars tightly wedded to a vaguely bubblegummy edge. It comes across as similar to ylang-ylang, at least to my nose, a distinctly tropical and "yellowish" floral feel, but Laprade's skill with fruity esters is also on full display, as the first thirty minutes of the drydown is a symphonic blast of apple/peach cobbler, tinged with the succulent warmth of freshly-sliced mango. I would argue the composition is chemically "front-loaded," a term that refers to fragrances with dazzling topnotes that fizzle into bland-musky nothings a few minutes later, as Tuberose Overdose doesn't do a whole lot after first application, but its topnotes hold pretty steadily for a few hours, slowly fading to a sweet musk about four hours in. I call it "linear," and pleasantly so.

Putting considerations about the eponymous note aside, Laprade's fragrance is unassailably gorgeous. I find myself wondering if she employed Symrise's proprietary Ecomusk R® (their answer to Givaudan's trademarked Sylkolide™), which I've read is a very warm, powdery, apple-fruity musk that finesses and softens the blaring edges of louder things. She used Ecomusk R® in a few fragrances for niche brand Mind Games, and seems to be skilled at raising conventional materials into a stratosphere of beauty I've never encountered before in a cheap designer fragrance. Tuberose Overdose isn't super complex, but it really sings. It does with a few fruit notes and perhaps two or three creamy florals (jasmine and plumeria are cited) what niche brands struggle to accomplish with an army barracks of pricier building blocks. As far as florals go, Banana Republic hasn't quite reached the level of something as refined as Fleurissimo, but they've come close. 

M for Men Eau de Toilette (Banana Republic)

Jean Claude Delville should be recognized alongside Alberto Morillas and Francis Kurkdjian as one of the three most influential perfumers of the nineties. Cabotine, Curve, Pleasures for Men, and Banana Republic's forgotten M are all noteworthy for shaping the olfactory landscape of the period. If you want a fresh and friendly fragrance to wear while kicking it at the mall, Delville's got your back. His specialty is sneaker juice. 

M for Men (1996) has been through several iterations over the past 27 years, and has currently settled on what appears to be an eau de parfum concentration, which is much lauded on the interwebs. I can't be bothered to go out of my way to drop coin on that, but recently I did stumble upon the EDT formula on a discount rack, and figured that a Banana Republic fragrance isn't the gamble I once thought it would be (thank you, Icon Collection). The box for M cites Gap EU as a distributer, itself a major nineties throwback. It turns out to be a pleasant valencia orange scent, an intense blast of sweet and juicy orange zest that skirts floor cleaner by dint of smelling surprisingly natural, followed by a mellow and unapologetically chemical woody-musk drydown, suggestive of department stores. 

M isn't the statement-maker nineties scent that Cabotine and Curve were, nor is it particularly complex and exciting, but it's an easy, sunny sort of smell that lifts spirits and conveys the neon-lit optimism of the time. I don't often encounter fragrances that focus on orange fruit, and when I do, the Italian in me perks up and gets excited, so I personally enjoy M as a gentle warm weather spritz for casual wear. For the bad boy version of this scent, try Juicy Couture's Dirty English, which adds terpenes and animalics.  

Grassland (Banana Republic)

Grassland. A perfume. Imagine you are a seasoned fragrance writer with an affinity for "green" scents, and you happen across the rarest Banana Republic Icon fragrance, Grassland. There isn't much written about it on the internet, so you're really squinting to discern what you're in for if you blind buy. The box is seafoam green. This is all you see, but it's enough. It turns out to be a clue. 

I remember smelling a deep vintage of Jacques Fath's Green Water years ago. It was the frosted glass bottle version, probably the formula sold in the late eighties and early nineties. Its juice was the same color as Grassland's packaging. Green Water smelled like crushed mint leaves, a medley of grass clippings and floral stems, a bright but very bitter citrus accord of lemon and bergamot, moss, and quite a bit of geranium behind all the turf. It was essentially a rough green gemstone of all the crisp, fresh, masculine elements of twentieth century "green" colognes, its un-sanded edges foisting its rich earthy notes into my face. Its longevity was abysmal, but its scent was unforgettable. I wanted it, but in a different iteration. Its 1950s vibe needed a good lapidary treatment. 

Banana Republic's scent smells to me like what vintage Green Water would be after that sort of polishing. We're talking very heavy industrial polishing here, with many hours of smoothing out the raw elements of Fath's idea, until nothing but a polite sparkle of abstract greenness remains. Grassland's opening accord is a very brief but realistic burst of bitter grassiness, which rapidly segues into a translucent sheet of lavender, petitgrain, spearmint, and geranium. Each note is recognizable, but rendered as very sheer and pastel, with a soapy feel that erases the earthy connotations of its predecessor. There's a bit of citrus, a bit of Granny Smith apple juice tinging the grass blades, and ultimately the fragrance is 1950s men's cologne meets contemporary unisex shampoo.

The Icon Collection is entirely unisex, despite having some entries that are more overtly masculine and feminine. They seem to have been designed to appeal to everyone in some way. Grassland will probably hold more appeal for men, but I could see women liking its cool, gentle style as well. I find it pleasant, sort of an evolutionary end point to the European colognes of yore. 

Wildbloom Vert (Banana Republic)

Some "green" fragrances evoke another color, something like flamingo pink, or a cross between an equally flamboyant pink and chartreuse. Wildbloom Vert's packaging suggests the fragrance is a bitter-green wildflower affair, when in fact it's a very fruity shampoo floral with a couple of juicy, borderline gourmand notes, and a handful of soapy pink floral whatever-ness. Given this, you'd think I'd be pretty "meh" about it. Not so: I like it.

Wildbloom Vert is the second flanker of the original Wildbloom, and was released in 2012, a year after the debut. I haven't smelled the other Wildblooms, but assume they're all a variation on this pedestrian theme of artificial froot-flavor notes. This fragrance reminds me of Cabotine, almost as if that scent were updated, and is almost a pass, yet for some reason its crisp delicious red apple note and the whole rosy bushel of chemical nonsense under it wins me over. The sweetness of the apple, which is mated to a massive pear note, and with a bow of vaguely green sappy notes around them, just feels happy and approachable. It's by far the least impressive Banana Republic fragrance I've encountered, but it still hits the mark it aims for and smells comfortably familiar and forgettable.

That said, this is a feminine I'm not inclined to wear. If I want pink and grey floral tones, I can wear Peony & Peppercorn or Chelsea Flowers. Those are a bit more focused on the floral, and less so on the fruit. But consider this the perfect gift perfume, something so mainstream and attractive that few women would reject it, and most would probably enjoy it and seek out more bottles. There's plenty of room in the world for challenging frags, but likable fruity-florals like this one have their place, too.

Metal Rain (Banana Republic)

Banana Republic will go down in history in ten or twenty years as being the last great designer perfume house, thanks to its Icon Collection. So far everything I've smelled from the line has been terrific. Metal Rain, an elusive fragrance retail-wise, is no exception. 

Many liken it to Silver Mountain Water, but it's closer to Millésime Imperial. Metal Rain reminds me of Club de Nuit Milestone. It uses Symrise's highly diffusive Ambrocenide, a sister chem to Ambermax, also comparable to Firmenich's potent and ambery Norlimbanol, and it emits a fruity-melon vibe paired with a woody-violet thing, like a "lite" version of GIT, only it's damper, darker, wetter. It's a kaleidoscope of muted pinks, purples, and greys on an overcast day. Its stark drydown makes me wonder if some perfumes are designed by men, for men, to appeal to men, and not appeal to women. Food for thought.

However, in keeping with the SMW tradition, much of the emphasis is on a tea and (pissy) currant accord which is deceptively difficult to do right, though Banana Republic manages it by using good materials. Where other clones get fixated on sweet berry, Metal Rain is more nuanced, and all the better for it. The nose behind it is a mystery, but whoever it was did a great job. Now, if only I could find Grassland . . . 

Gardenia & Cardamom (Banana Republic)

This is an interesting perfume. Banana Republic's Icon Collection fragrances have so far been total bullseyes in both quality and value, and Gardenia & Cardamom retains their winning streak in my book. At twenty bucks, you really can't beat this. I know I've said this before about their other frags, but I'll repeat myself - this could easily be priced at a hundred dollars, and nobody would complain. If you'd told me ten years ago that Banana Republic would release some of the best fragrances of the late teens and early twenties, I would have laughed in your face. It goes to show that brands can surprise people!

Gardenia is well known for being next to impossible to do perfectly, chiefly because it's a flower from which very little natural essence can be extracted, much like lilac and lily of the valley. Thus all attempts at it are usually reconstructions, i.e., accords built of ten or more chemicals that smell very similar to the gardenia flower when blended in the proper amounts. As a tropical white flower, gardenia notes are popular in feminine perfumes, but are often rendered very loosely, which is the polite way of saying they only smell of gardenia for a few minutes before other similar white floral notes take over. It's a typical bait and switch; inexpensive (non-luxury) brands like Jōvan and Dana have gardenia perfumes that they market as soliflores, but they're actually just tuberose and/or jasmine accords with enough embellishment to briefly push the eponymous note into the buyer's imagination. Chanel's rendition was lambasted by Luca Turin as being a trashy airport toilet floral, and it's an expensive fragrance, so most mainstream brands shy away from showcasing gardenia nowadays. 

That's not to say the note can't be done, because it certainly can! W.A. Poucher's formulas demonstrate that gardenia reconstructions are relatively complex, and include bergamot oil, ylang oil, jasmine and tuberose bases (in hefty amounts), and methyl phenyl carbinyl acetate, for a sturdy "green" quality that is useful in upholding the expansive sweetness of the accord. Things like orange flower, methyl anthranilate (essential in Schiff bases), and indole are necessary also. Headspace analysis of living gardenia would bring a perfumer closer to the biochemical template, and with an unlimited budget and equally unlimited attempts, I would wager that a highly skilled nose could assemble a photorealistic gardenia note that would last a few hours. According to Jarubol Chaichana's 2009 study, Volatile Constituents and Biological Activities of Gardenia Jasminoides, headspace breakdowns revealed the presence of farnesene, cis-ocimene, linalool, cis-3-hexenyl tiglate, methyl tiglate, hexyl tiglate, and methyl benzoate, among several other things. 

Of interest among those, to me at least, are the cis-3-hexenyl tiglate, and the other tiglates. The profile for cis-3-hexenyl tiglate is fresh, green, sweet-floral, with similarities to the smells of banana and gardenia. Farnesene and its compounds are associate with fruit skins, usually green apples, and methyl benzoate has a fruity/minty aspect. The danger of relying on every headspace element is that many of them are merely extant in organic materials without providing any distinct character to their odor. In other words, you can miss the forest for the trees and get wrapped up in trying to include things that are present in something, but which don't effect its overall scent profile. I imagine that this is the challenge for any perfumer faced with a gardenia brief and a limited budget. He or she is tasked with building a space with perhaps only the most essential materials available, and excluding several dozen materials which might help the outcome to varying degrees. 

This must have been the case for Vincent Kuczinski, who also authored Peony & Peppercorn. In that scent he used whatever fruity-floral material(s) are present in the dozens of Silver Mountain Water clones floating around these days, and merely extended those fresh-sweet qualities in a distinctly floral direction to achieve a typical modern feminine. But with Gardenia & Cardamom the job was a bit more complicated. Based on what I smell, Kuczinski was interested in heeding Poucher's ideas in his reconstruction, because G&C's top note is a bracing orangey-bergamot note, with just enough sweet 'n sour juiciness to catch my attention. It's a surprisingly warm note, lucid and measured, and doesn't come across as overbearing, screechy, or cheap. Simply a wet citrus juice effect, which rapidly (within twenty seconds) morphs into the only stage where I smell what seems like a 70% successful reconstruction of gardenia, a lush, sweet, almost overripe white floral tone, with just the right balance of richness and creaminess. There's even more evidence that Kuczinski has read up on his Poucher when the gardenia begins to resemble ylang in its intense sweetness. 

It doesn't last, however, and by the five minute mark it is clear that he was asked to do a white floral bouquet instead of a gardenia soliflore. The gardenia's delicate balance gives way to a more obviously fleshed-out tuberose and jasmine accord, and then the jasmine gets all creamy and powdery and summery, and suddenly I'm only two clicks away from suntan lotion territory. I'm reminded of Vanilla Fields, although the jasmine here is far better (not quite as woody) and doesn't smell nearly as chemical. But what about the cardamom? It's there, unlike the pepper note in Peony & Peppercorn, but it's very subtly integrated into the bouquet, and it's a bit green, only hinting at woodiness. This greenness seems rather obvious to me, and makes me wonder if methyl phenyl carbinyl acetate was used in a lithe dose to bring out the greener facet of these three white floral notes. Tuberose tends toward rich buttery, jasmine towards coconut creamy, and gardenia toward sweet green. Yet the retrohale on G&C evokes a soft hint of a green grape-like flavor, so methyl anthranilates seem to have been incorporated also. 

How does all of this translate to the nose? After the citrus pop at the start and the initial five minute gardenia effect, the whisk of tuberose and more enduring creamy jasmine, all tied together by a slight green-woody cardamom seed, present as a very modern white floral. It's not going to blow your mind artistically, and it isn't the least bit challenging beyond the usual trappings of gender norms (again, are there any guys wearing this?), but at no stage of its drydown does G&C smell cheap, chemical, overly simplistic (no fuzzing out of notes, no gauzy-sweet musks), or juvenile (it's sugar free!). This presents are simply a basic white floral, with your familiar triad of mainstream players, all touched by a twist of non-spicy, subliminally green cardamom. I think it's a little more unisex that Peony & Peppercorn, and will have no trouble enjoying it this summer. 

Peony & Peppercorn (Banana Republic)

I find it interesting that Banana Republic markets its Icon Collection fragrances as entirely unisex, even when the packaging is pink and the name suggests "spiced floral." Such is the case with Peony & Peppercorn, which comes in a pallid pink box and bottle, and broadcasts to the world that this is a peony fragrance - peony, the most feminine-smelling flower in existence. Yet it is aimed at either sex. It's definitely 2022. 

A few things I've noticed: P&P has no peppercorn, and is mislabeled. It should be called White Tea & Peony, or even something more abstract, like Cameo Pink. The top note is a wan, sour, leafy smell, reminiscent of extra fine tea buds blended with a whiff of a metal spoon stirring them in warm water. Pepper notes are hard to do well, but fresh florals are another story; peony is the most common floral note in modern perfumery. It ranges from awful to excellent, and it's academic for a skilled nose to throw a good one into a fragrance. Vincent Kuczinski orchestrated everything, and he did a nice job.

Yet the peony is a conceit in this fragrance. Banana Republic's "peony" is the same as the blackcurrant notes in my SMW knockoffs! When I say "blackcurrant notes," I'm referring to the chemical(s) responsible for creating the feminine, berry-sweet effect in those frags. Kuczinski extended the fruitiness into a floral direction, finessing the palette (possibly a combination of dimethyl benzyl carbinyl butyrate and alpha damascone) into fragile petals, and an obvious fruity-floral feel. Fragrantica mentions plum as the only sweet fruit in the pyramid, but if we're being honest, it should be identified as "red berries." Side by side with Silver Shade, Sun Java White, and Al-Wisam Day, it's identical. Although there's no pepper note here, what I like about Peony & Peppercorn is that the execution of the peony shows how pretty it can smell in something composed by a talented perfumer.  

In a conventional mindset, it's hard to argue this isn't a feminine fragrance. It's perfect for women. That the company behind it is trying to snag both markets is fascinating, but I don't think men are on board. I am, because I'm a weirdo, and I appreciate a realistic fruity-floral scent, especially when it eschews sugar and shampoo effects and goes in a more natural and grounded direction. Nonexistent pepper aside, I'd guess in a blind test that Peony & Peppercorn is worth well over $100. Get it before it's discontinued. 

17 Oud Mosaic (Banana Republic)

It's August, and autumn is right around the corner here in the stormy and muggy Northeast. Although I'm growing ever fonder of barbershop stuff, and foresee a future of wearing inexpensive powdery things commonly found on Barbicide-stained hair salon shelves, there's still occasion to don something that is more mature and sophisticated. 17 Oud Mosaic by Banana Republic makes for a compelling option in that regard.

As everyone who reads this blog knows, I'm not a fan of oud. The oud craze emerged back in the late 2000s, mostly with niche releases, and carried steadily onward through the last decade, when it penetrated the designer market, but I never warmed to it. Real oud is a complex note of prickly rotted woods and barnyard animalic funk, and is usually polished with a silvery glow akin to incense, and while that sounds like my thing, there's something about the funk that turns me off. I'm all for animalics, but the weirdly sweaty aspect of quality oud doesn't register as anything particularly sexy to me. 

Fortunately, Oud Mosaic doesn't contain a detectable oud note, real or synthetic. I won't hold back here: this fragrance is a 2017 recalibration of a 1989 fragrance by Azzaro called Acteur. Claude Dir, who authored the original feminine Escape for CK back in 1991, clearly studied the budgetary constraints of Azzaro's formula, assessed Maurice Maurin's rose reconstruction, approximated the spiced-woody accord that segues into Azzaro's floral note, and relied on excess of fruity esters to present something arguably original. That said, the rose here is Acteur's (the far dry-down woods are Zino's).  

The very top of Dir's fragrance is an opulent cloud of cedar, cardamom, vetiver, pepper, saffron, and musk, . . . eh, no this is complete bullshit. It's really just a piquant raw apple cider with underpinnings of cedar and lime that swiftly blurs into a darker semisweet stewed red apple and dry rose accord, and this October rose stays pretty linear before fading away several hours later. Longevity and projection are pretty good, although not mind-blowing, and I do wish the opening brightness persisted for much longer than it does, but the rose is so pleasant and grounding that all is forgiven. For twenty bucks, this is incredible stuff, and the sort of thing I miss dearly. It's the early nineties again.

I'm not sure why it's called "Oud" Mosaic, though. Is the woodsy cider effect meant to create an olfactory mosaic that generates the impression of oud? The classic pairing of woods and funereal rose is what's presented, and maybe the dusty anachronisms of the two parts lend a psychological perception of oud's presence? I'm not getting that, which guarantees I'll be wearing 17 Oud Mosaic often in the months to come.

Neroli Woods (Banana Republic)

I purchased this scent blind, not because I read about it beforehand (I didn't), or have any affinity for the designer brand (I don't), but because neroli is an uncommon example of a simple and linear note that usually smells expensive. Neroli is the creamy bath suds of triple-milled luxury hotel soap. Neroli is the salted citrus spritz of $30 beachside resort drinks. Neroli is the Ferrari of green floral materials. Neroli is sex with a very expensive woman. Neroli is Italy in a bottle. In this obscure Banana Republic scent, I expected it to be functional at worst, and likable at best. Well, I lucked out. I love this fragrance. 

It's important to gain perspective on neroli as a popular contemporary note. Tom Ford's Neroli Portobello Mushroom Sauce and Penhaligon's Castile suffer from imprecisions of balance and concentration, making thir over-produced flourishes smell loud and stodgy. At one-tenth their price, Neroli Woods smells soft, unpretentious, elegant. Here the nose employed excellent materials to conjoin a golden citrus top note to a delicate white floral base, and the result is refreshingly natural and luxurious for designer fare. I find that it extends the neroli of 4711 well past the ten minute mark, and into the workday. 

I would guess the name Neroli Woods is aimed at males, yet the only woody hues are whispers of jasmine and cedar undergirding the star note. If you're a wet shaver like me who wears hesperidic splashes and wants a solid neroli scent to pair with them after a shave, stop here. I don't fully understand the artistic concept behind the Icon Collection, I don't know how the pedestrian Banana Republic landed such first-world perfumes, and I've discovered it's better not to ask questions when such fortunes are granted. I just tell myself, "Be grateful Bryan, and enjoy."