Aoud Violet (Mancera)

Aoud Violet, released in 2014, shows that if you want florals from Mancera/Montale, rose is the way to go. It's not that the brand can't do other florals, as this is certainly a decent violet fragrance with plenty in its corner. It's just that Pierre Montale knows his way around the harmonization of natural and synthetic rose materials, while the 100% synthetic violet in this fragrance poses a challenge he doesn't seem entirely willing to embrace. 

It resides in a territory that has been covered, often more dynamically, by less expensive fragrances. Fahrenheit, Grey Flannel, and Creed’s Love in Black (which is ironically cheaper at grey market prices than Aoud Violet is at retail) all explore similar approaches to the peppery greenness and purple sweetness of violet materials, and do so with more personality. Mancera’s version opens green and brisk, with galbanum, bergamot, and a polished aldehydic lift that signals quality—and considerable value—at its roughly $70 grey-market price point. That quickly gives way to a plush violet accord that’s lightly petrol-tinged but mostly dry-powdery and semisweet. From there, it settles into violet and iris wrapped in Galaxolide and clean musks. By the four-hour mark, those musks take over, and the scent remains largely unchanged for the next ten hours, a steady impression of purpley-grey florals at the laundromat. Longevity and projection are admirable here.

There are hints of spice, but they register more as violet leaf piquancy than as distinct notes. The violet leaf itself never takes center stage, instead hovering in the background with a watery, cucumber-like effect from materials such as nonadienal and methyl octyn carbonate. This likely explains why some reviewers call Aoud Violet aquatic, even though it isn’t. In the end, I enjoy wearing it because it’s smooth and inoffensive, but I also find it the most vanilla violet I own. This is an olfactory theme that benefits from risk. Fahrenheit succeeds because it commits to how subversive and dark its subject matter can get. Love in Black is unapologetically maudlin. Grey Flannel glowers. Aoud Violet plays it safe, and the comfort it offers doesn’t quite make up for the boredom it leaves behind.

Side note: "Aoud" Violet contains zero oud. 

Amber & Roses (Mancera)

An absolute masterpiece.

This 2014 release is often described as a dark, vampiric, and overtly Goth take on roses. Given the name "Mancera," which sounds like it should be for a Scandinavian death-metal band in 1993, I was ready for something overwrought. Instead, I found myself wearing a beautifully made Damask rose fragrance not far from Creed’s Fleur de Thé Rose Bulgare (2000), and that surprised me more than anything else.

The surprise is partly about the brand. Mancera, Montale’s Western-facing sibling, wasn’t where I expected this level of refinement. Montale does plenty well, but often with obvious synthetics, designer-ish structures, and a taste for excess, so I assumed Amber & Roses would follow suit. It doesn’t—it's a few cuts above my two Montales.

When a perfume is this good, I prefer to keep the descriptions simple. Amber & Roses opens with a wan green geranium leaf accord, bitter, oddly isolated, and accompanied only by a faint suggestion of lemon. For the first ten minutes it feels almost like a misfire. The geranium smells natural enough, but its peppery bite has been sanded down to something muted and indistinct, as if it's being perceived from a great distance.

Then the veil lifts, and a remarkable rose blooms. It’s not a once-in-a-generation rose, but it smells like a master perfumer was given a generous budget and plenty of time: a clear, composed bouquet of Turkish roses. You can sense both naturals and high-quality synthetics at work, with rose absolute reinforced by a late 1980s headspace-style rose reconstruction, and it's lucid, naturally sweet, only bordering on jammy, without tipping too far over the edge. Nothing novel, but beautifully executed.

The tiny green sliver of geranium stays present amidst the bouquet, joined by cool dosings of Ambroxan and a silvery incense note, judiciously (read: slyly) used to bolster the rose, not steal its thunder. The Ambroxan is the same type used in Armaf’s Club de Nuit line—it’s not Cetalox or Ambrofix—but Mancera's choice feels right here. Basic Ambroxan’s twangy, faintly metallic edge works perfectly with the incense and with rose’s own bitter-metallic facet. Everything is balanced, cleanly dosed, and refreshingly simple.

It makes me think of Fleur de Thé Rose Bulgare because that was another Turkish Rose with a light sprig of green-woodiness that eventually (after around ten hours) dried down to a balls-to-the-wall ambergris base. Creed used at least 25% real ambergris tincture in the 2000s, with Ambroxan as a boosting agent, but even they're not using the real stuff anymore, so Mancera's all-synth "amber" is perfectly fine, even if they're not using the more expensive proprietary oil house materials. 

What matters is how it flows, and as with Fleur de Thé Rose Bulgare, Amber & Roses moves like a simple and direct rose/ambergris fragrance, with a touch of green-woodiness, a faint geranium instead of Creed's meek green tea note, and an extremely light incense adding just a touch of extra dimension that even the Creed lacked. Given a choice between the older fragrance's big Moby Dick energy ambergris (the stuff was pretty raw and smelled like salty pennies submerged under wet seaweed that's been beached under the sun for seventeen hours) and Mancera's piously wispy incense with an even more subliminal microdrop of myrrh, I actually prefer Pierre Montale's take.

I’d like to note a YouTube review by Marc Robitaille, where he spent several minutes sniffing, grimacing, and downvoting this stuff. Yes, he looks sincere. But Marc is far too perceptive to genuinely think this smells bad. I suspect he's gatekeeping in an effort to prevent grey market supply from drying up, and honestly, I can respect that with this fragrance. It really is that good. If I were smarter, I’d do the same.

So no, don’t buy Amber & Roses. It’s disgusting. Easily the worst thing Mancera makes. Best to stay far away.

Silver Blue (Mancera)

The bitter truth about perfume since 1972 is that there are only a few truly original ideas that have been bottled and sold to men. Everything else is a riff on one or another of that handful of groundbreakers, be it Paco Rabanne Pour Homme (1973), Grey Flannel (1975), Azzaro Pour Homme (1978), Drakkar Noir (1982), Green Irish Tweed (1985), Cool Water (1988), Fahrenheit (1988), Eternity for Men (1989), Acqua di Giò (1996), A*Men (1996), or Aventus (2010). Every masculine of the last decade is at least a vague copy of one of these, and every other one is blatantly so. This makes reviewing masculines an exercise in tedium, only elevated to interest by how utterly shameless its subjects are. 

Released in 2019 as a Selfridges exclusive, Silver Blue is a branch off the A*Men tree of nineties-era subversive masculines. There isn't a "natural" note to be found in its glacé quasi-gourmand composition, although its synthetics are pellucid and seamless, and it took my nose all of three seconds to discern its familiar blend of almost-mint aldehydes, buttery caramel, and earthy patchouli. It smells dissonant yet congruent, the exact thing that made Angel and its flankers so compelling in the age before smart phones. Its mishmash of burnt sugars over indigestible woody resins lifts the banality of perfume candy into a higher realm of contrasts. Successful perfumes harness contrasts: Caron Pour un Homme's strident lavender pulses gorgeously against its cushy vanilla backdrop; peach nectar glistens through an oakmoss gloaming in Mitsouko; Silver Blue's caramel smiles sweetly through a bitter bushel of patchouli and woods. It's a subtle but pleasant way of creating nonchalant freshness, and it's very nice.

I'm 41 years old, and I remember the nineties well. A*Men (the silvery-blue star) was the expensive and very weird sorta-niche gourmand frag with an intense rubbery tar note boldly contrasting with caramel, chocolate, and coffee. Conversely, Silver Blue offers a relatively timid contrast without full commitment, and its constituent parts aren't vibrant enough to make up for the lack of daring necessary to make this sort of thing fly. It did win me a couple of compliments, so it's undeniably persuasive, but I still prefer A*Men. Anything that attempts to emulate the Mugler effect needs to go hard, or go home.