Gold+ (Commodity)

I'm pleasantly surprised by this fragrance. It consists of three main notes—nutmeg, saffron, and patchouli—and that’s exactly what I get. My issue with Gold+ is that it forgoes the vanilla freshness of its namesake in favor of a spice mélange that resembles Prada Luna Rossa Ocean EDP and Parfum, without adding anything new to the conversation.

Gold+ opens with an incredibly realistic nutmeg note, as if I had taken a McCormick shaker and dusted the spice directly onto my skin. The only other detectable note is a slight shimmer of ISO E Super to smooth the edges. Within ninety minutes, the nutmeg shifts to safranal, intensifying the fragrance with a quality reminiscent of Luna Rossa Ocean Le Parfum—but without the same depth or complexity. Still, it’s impressive.

The patchouli finally emerges, six hours later, though it’s weak. The nutmeg-saffron duo is so dominant that little else breaks through, leaving the scent locked into a simplified Italian designer profile. It remains static and unchanging until you do laundry or take three or four showers. Whatever these materials are, they’re nothing short of nuclear. With Ocean, even after four wash cycles, I can still smell it. Gold+ is just as clingy. If you want to drench yourself in liquid gold and never smell anything else again, this is for you.

Gold (Commodity)

Donna Ramanauskas, the creative force behind Gold and several other Commodity fragrances, has a style that's unmistakably her own. It’s light and energetic, fresh yet palpable, with an edge that flirts with challenging notes like inedible vanilla and sharp cypress. These two elements dominate Gold, resulting in a fragrance that, while not particularly daring, carries an air of sophistication. The interplay of crisp woods and soapy vanilla feels polished, even if it doesn’t venture far from the designer amber path.

Oriental and amber fragrances rarely hold my attention. They often grow monotonous and lean into a cloying femininity that I tire of quickly. Gold, however, sidesteps these pitfalls by weaving in nuanced layers. Its vanillic amber is softened with a touch of benzoin and an almost otherworldly synthetic sandalwood. This sandalwood doesn’t aim for authenticity but instead provides just enough weight to prevent the composition from floating into oblivion. Iso E Super hums in the background, its woody vibration threading through the drydown, where transparent wisps of vanilla and white musk add a cool, breezy texture. If you’re torn between smelling clean or cozy, Gold offers a compromise, though one that leaves me wishing for a fragrance that's a bit more natural-smelling and daring.

Vanilla reigns supreme in Gold, but this is a hyper-modern interpretation, stripped of imperfections. It’s a flawlessly smooth, almost digital note, devoid of spice, warmth, or romance. Some might find solace in its unerring refinement, but I long for a richer balance, something earthy, like the clove-heavy nostalgia of Old Spice, something alive. Gold is a masterclass in technical precision but lacks the soul to make it truly memorable. I expect a perfume to move me on an emotional and intellectual level, especially if it's named after what I must fork over to own a bottle. Gold leaves me cold. 

Book (Commodity)

Palo santo is an unusual material. While it has an appealing scent, its pure form doesn’t strike me as something that would work in a personal fragrance. Sandalwood, cedarwood, and even oud have qualities that seem harmonious with human skin, but palo santo has this odd dill-pickle edge that dominates my olfactory experience, making it difficult to picture as a wearable scent. Commodity, however, changed my perspective.

Book is a fragrance containing a palo santo note that feels approachable, and I think it smells fantastic. Interestingly, Commodity doesn’t list palo santo in its note pyramid, and for the first few hours, you might not detect it. By the third or fourth hour, though, it subtly emerges, supporting the drier, “fresh” aromatics that came before. Book strives to recreate the experience of turning a dusty page. It’s a conceptual fragrance that evokes the scent of inky, well-loved paper, and I believe it succeeds. Book smells beautiful.

Yet, it raises the question: would I want to smell like an old, dusty book? This is where the niche factor enters: fragrances like this appeal only to a small subset of aficionados who yearn for the ambiance of an antique bookshop, surrounded by shelves of calfskin and vellum. Notes almost feel irrelevant here; Book simply smells like a book. Anyone who loves books enough to want to wear their scent will find joy in it.

Velvet (Commodity)

Velvet hits the skin with a rush of saffron and almond, creating a striking 3D, non-alcoholic amaretto accord, quite unexpected from this house, and something that immediately drew me in. Commodity’s booklet mentions “black amber,” which I take as a nod to an accord akin to Noir de Noir’s black truffle and amber. Indeed, Velvet bears a strong resemblance to Noir de Noir (and by extension, Club de Nuit Intense for Women). As the top notes fade, the heart of Turkish rose and balsamic notes rises, leaving me wondering if they were aiming for a Tom Ford effect here.

As it continues to dry down, the fragrance becomes sweeter. Hints of hot chocolate, toasted nuts, vanilla, amber, and musk dance in and out, until the vanillic notes firm up, blending seamlessly with the rose. The result is a semi-floral, semi-gourmand vibe that projects steadily for at least eight hours. Despite its allure, Velvet belongs to an overwrought scent profile that has been a bit too popular in the last twenty years. Although it lacks Noir de Noir's oud, wearing Velvet delivers a similar experience. Yes, it feels a little less opulent, a touch cheaper, but for those avoiding the Armaf route, Velvet offers a niche-like option without the hefty price tag or overt gendering. The plush amber gives it a distinctly unisex character, leaning slightly masculine. This sort of fragrance has never been for me, but it's undeniably pleasant.

Yet, I can't help but wonder about the people who buy and wear Commodity fragrances. Why doesn’t this brand resonate with me? The minimalistic bottles, the postmodern typeface on color-matched labels, the clinical names—they both attract and repel. My inner Curious George longs to “get” whatever it is I’m seeing and smelling, while another part of me simply doesn’t care. I picture myself in The Backrooms, drifting from one liminal space to another, until I stumble upon a Commodity bottle on a table in a hallway. I spray it, briefly thinking an eternity in damp-carpet purgatory might not be so bad—until the lights go out. Time to move on.

Moss (Commodity)

Minimalism is something I've been thinking about for most of my life. The idea of abandoning the complex modern world and living on a desert island in a spartan hut with no extraneous belongings was a childhood fantasy. Just me, a pen full of chickens, a small vegetable garden, a fishing pole, and the open ocean. No concern about a job, or money, or social pressures. Just make my own food and live. Pretty appealing. 

So I understand the philosophical ethic behind a fragrance like Moss  (dubbed "Personal" by the brand), a bleached white bottle containing a scent so simple and spare that Millburn, Coleman, and Nicodemus would surely endorse it. It opens with a faint whiff of citrus, juniper, and some green spice, and rapidly the citrus and juniper coalesce around a piercingly sharp petitgrain that focuses like an arrow on conveying a brisk freshness with just enough oomph! to travel two inches off my body. We're talking barely there, folks. Sneeze and you miss it. Within three hours it's gone. 

Commodity was a little too successful here. While Moss  does smell good, and I enjoy the crisp green notes on offer, everything is a little too wan and washed out to warrant further wears. Why apply something that will be gone before lunch? Heck, before breakfast, even? I'm all for minimalism, but there's a difference between that and scraping by, and with its razor-thin drydown, this one leaves me hanging. 

Moss+ (Commodity)

There is an easy way to know what kinds of fragrances niche brands should offer, and very few of them are in on the secret, but the art directors at Commodity most certainly are. What you might not know about perfume is that there is nothing original anymore. Anyone who tells you otherwise isn't telling the truth. With that knowledge intact, what would be a sure-fire hit that doesn't feel like direct plagiarism, but totally is? What would move the most units annually for a reason most buyers can't articulate, but know is true? 

If you take any mass-market hit from the last sixty years and give it a tune-up with superior materials, it will sell. It's that simple. Just ask Creed. Their entire success story is about how the brand took designer and mass-market classics, and simply remade them with more expensive stuff. Moss+ is that kind of scent. I sprayed it on myself for the first time, took one sniff, and grinned. It smelled of wonderful things, muted citrus, watery herbs, clean patchouli, delicate white florals, crisp greens. If the way its notes are assembled were original, or trying to be original, I probably wouldn't like it. But I like it because it does something else. It adheres to an archetypical formula, one which millions of men are exhaustively familiar with. Moss+ is a remake of Brut. 

There are several noticeable differences. I detect no anise, and there is lavender, but it is far quieter than Brut's. The white floral arrangement of Brut is also dialed back, with the greener accents dialed up. In lieu of coumarin there is an Iso E Super-driven woody amber, which achieves a similarly dry/sweet woodiness, but isn't nearly as rich. There is no vanilla in Moss+, which I think might have been an interesting note to tinker with here, and maybe they did in a mod and rejected it. Commodity's scent reads as a leaner modernized update to the classic wetshaver fougère, and if I didn't already own too many fragrances, I'd buy a full bottle, and maybe even a backup. Excellent stuff. 

Paper (Commodity)

Commodity releases its perfumes in sets of three (don't even ask), placing their "expressive" fragrances between the "personal" on one side and the "bold" on the other. Super-duper trite, if you ask me. I interpret "expressive" as referring to a perfume for those who prefer not to have mathematical signs mingling in their wardrobes. You're not taking sides; you're simply expressing yourself by wearing a regular, not-too-soft, not-too-loud fragrance. Commodity's Paper is intriguing because, well, paper usually smells pretty good, and creating a perfume inspired by it seems like a noble quest. Having spent my college years flipping through reams of inventive paper samples that were made to win the wallets of graphics firms in the bygone era of printing, I am quite familiar with it.

Paper is meant to be one of those spartan minimalist fragrances, boasting a simple woody profile of Iso E Super, cedarwood, and sandalwood. And yes, for the first four hours, it's pretty much Iso E Super all the way, that "buzzy" sheer aromatic effect of some kind of fantasy carpenter's shop, where the sawdust smells as warm and inviting as a fatherly hug. Eventually it gets a touch sweeter, a little foresty, and the cedar picks up a bit, but it only takes you through lunch. By the six hour mark the sweetness has bloomed into a distinctly amaranthine glow, like a halo of sandalwood surrounding your space. This is all very nice, very nice indeed. Even if you know nothing about perfume, Paper will give you the Cliffs Notes and enlighten you on the fly. Hard to argue with something so efficient. 

While I appreciate the understated beauty of it, Paper does have one problem. If you know nothing or little about perfume, it might smell like one of the nicest things you've ever encountered. But if you're like me, and you've been around the block a few times, Paper feels academic. This basic woody amber is popular in perfumery because it works so well, but everyone in the industry knows it works well. It is therefore unavoidably banal in such a bare-bones form, an accord imitated the world over. Commodity is offering the same svelte engine that has driven every department store masculine since 1976 (Z-14), and hoping you're new in town. Spend a day at Neiman Marcus and get back to me. 

Moss (Commodity)

I approached Moss by Commodity thinking I was in for another bland green chemical "niche" perfume. The ideas of vegan, sustainable, converse-wearing, granola-eating, pearl-clutching, minimalist perfume was iffy to me. I sprayed it on paper, took a sniff, and smelled nothing. Took another sniff, and still smelled nothing. Took a third sniff, and the paper smelled as it did five minutes earlier, except not as good. I shook my head in disgust, and looked at the bottle. You're really going to make me do this, aren't you? I'm going in totally blind. Not even a vague clue on a blotter. Ok, here goes nothing. 

First spray hit skin, and still nothing. I ducked back in a few seconds later, my interest nearly entirely gone, and froze. My god. My. God. The juiciest bergamot, mixed with a little sweet lemon. Exhilarating petitgrain, like making out with an orange tree. A camphorous edge, not medicinal, but elevating, clarifying, brilliant. The pairing of real citrus notes with the zesty nuance of elemi resin, so bright and cheerful, a song for the senses, all appearing on skin like a divine apparition. The most gorgeous top accord I've smelled since first encountering Original Vetiver in 2010, and Green Valley in 2011. Just as green, in fact. What is this stuff? I looked at the bottle again, and then sprayed it like a madman all over myself. I took my shirt off and draped it on a chair so I could spray it with perfectly-aimed shots. Spritz, spritz, spritz, spritz, spritz. It's green. It's clean. It's grassy. It's orangey. It's fizzy. It's natural smelling. I don't care what people say about it online. I don't care what its mission statement is. It smells amazing. I must have more.

The beauty continued for a few hours thereafter, a quasi-cologne citrus-vetiver ensemble that was clearly taken from Original Vetiver, Mugler Cologne, Malizia Uomo Vetyver, with bits of Neroli Woods and even 4711 in the mix. The vetiver mingles with a light cedar note in the transparent (i.e., modern) base, and with the petitgrain and orange blossom essences enduring, it adopts a bit of a Terre d'Hermès vibe, though Moss is significantly greener. As for the moss itself, there isn't much, aside from a smidgen of synthetic oak moss blended in with the woods. But this particular Commodity fragrance is so well presented, so elegantly poised in its simple arrangement of fresh-woody greens, that I'm after a bottle. Anything this directly related to Original Vetiver belongs in my collection.