Tyrannosaurus Rex (Zoologist)

Antonio Gardoni is clearly a genius, as evidenced by his work for his own range, but good lord is T-Rex a bad fragrance. It opens smelling like Icy Hot muscle rub, and keeps smelling camphorous and chemical forever. What gives?

I can suss out the florals—rose, ylang, champaca, jasmine—but they're compressed into a fairly useless framing of harsh resinous materials that scream over the bouquet and destroy my sinuses. The muscle rub association never lets up, and frankly that stuff smells better. Strong whiffs of skanky incense and synthetic civet in the base do little to help matters, and while I can appreciate the tight blending, the end result is crappy. 

Life is too short to wear these kinds of perfumes. I get it, the perfumer and the brand he works for are trying to break new ground with a daring scent that is truly "niche," and on that count, they succeed. But the goal of wearing a perfume, any perfume, is to smell good. I don't need to spend hundreds of dollars to smell like dirty muscle balm. 

No thanks. Next . . . 

Panda (Zoologist)

Christian Carbonnel is the nose behind this one, and I have to say -- he nailed it. I’m talking about the 2017 formula here. Technically, I should call it Panda 2017, since the original was done by Paul Kiler around 2013 or 2014. But at this point, this version is Panda. It’s easily the freshest and most easygoing of Zoologist’s gender-neutral, masculine-leaning offerings, and I like it. A lot.

It opens with a cool burst of green tea and grassy, leafy florals. Nothing stands out individually, but they’re blended with just enough texture and nuance to give the air a soft, glowing greenness. Then comes a green apple note -- crisp, a little bitter, almost like a crab apple -- tempered by a hint of sugar. It’s not candy-sweet, more like the scent of just-picked fruit. There’s an earthy thread beneath the apple, never dominant, but present. Imagine a ripe apple resting in damp soil. That’s the vibe. Nothing here smells loud or synthetic, and despite civet being listed in the base, I don’t detect it at all. Maybe it’s there just to deepen the earthiness. If you’re an apple note lover, this is paradise. 

Of course, I have one caveat: you can get your apple fix for a lot less. Donna Karan, Hugo Boss, even Cool Water and Nautica Voyage, plus the fragrance in my next review -- they all do great apple-adjacent scents without the Zoologist price tag. So why splurge on Panda? Well, because Carbonnel’s take smells luminous, natural, and unusually lifelike. It’s a crisp-fruit reverie, bottled. If that’s your thing, and your wallet agrees, then by all means, go for it. I just don't have the scratch. 

Moth (Zoologist)

Tomoo Inaba is the author of both Moth and Nightingale, and I found the latter beautiful, if strained and derivative. It draws heavily from antique chypres, chiefly Mitsouko, with a whisper of modern flair. It smells lovely, and I’d wear it -- except, well, Mitsouko. Inaba clearly lifted from it, and did so skillfully, but in the end, Guerlain does it better, and for far less. There’s no sense in paying a premium and waiting for an import from Canada (or California, if you’re a Luckyscent customer) when you can find a superior rendition on eBay or Amazon and have Mitsy at your door the next day for $200 less.

Moth, however, is another story. I wouldn’t wear it even if you paid me --  and if you offered a million-dollar check, I’d hesitate. It opens promisingly: nutmeg, cinnamon, clove, pepper, saffron, cumin, with each note distinct and vivid for five fleeting minutes, and a lemon aldehyde lifting the whole into clarity. I almost believe I could enjoy it. Then the curtain drops. Florals: mimosa, rose, iris, heliotrope, and jasmine well up sweetly, but are yoked to a synthetic oud accord that crushes every bit of their natural dreaminess. It smells like damp wood, dried mouse droppings, and mothballs. It doesn’t evoke a forgotten drawer; it shoves you into a rotting attic, like something from a gothic horror movie set. Oh, and it fleetingly reminds me of how my great grandmother's house used to smell, back when we'd visit her in the very late 1980s and very early 1990s, shortly before her death. Her house reeked. Truly a dismal memory. 

For the first hour, I hoped to love Moth. It lingered in that peculiar space of possibly being another Cockatiel, i.e., a Zoologist I'd consider buying. But at ninety minutes, Moth crossed the point of no return. The oud, the faux ambergris (not Ambroxan, as it smells like Inaba needlessly attempted to go the long way around and do his own painstaking reconstruction), the honey, the unwashed patchouli -- all of it grotesque, like a brutalist portrait of decay. It conjures the stench of wood saturated by decades of human hands, like old church pews blooming on a humid summer's day with their own unholy spirit. That’s Moth, for no less than twelve suffocating hours. Ugh.

Sloth (Zoologist)

I often wonder if rich people actually wear these perfumes. If I were a millionaire, would Sloth by Zoologist be my signature scent? Then I hop into my downmarket Toyota Corolla and drive to Woodbury, where I drop $100 on seven grocery items at New Morning Market, inhaling that unmistakable “health food store” aroma—spices, grains, and wood. And that’s when it hits me: Sloth is right at home in a millionaire’s lair. This is the premier fragrance of choice for the Connecticut blue blood who drops $500 on groceries that barely last the weekend. Why not?

There’s no use romanticizing this fragrance. Sloth smells like spicy body odor, and wearing it feels like a social experiment gone wrong. It reminds me of a grad school professor—another lefty blue blood—who spent half a class reminiscing about visiting India, where crowds of poor people reached out and touched her clothes, which she somehow recalled fondly. I imagine that scene smelled exactly like Sloth. Prin Lomros (the nose behind Bat and Rhinoceros) created this one, but I just don’t get it. Perfume is supposed to make you smell good. Sloth does the opposite.

What anyone sees in this is beyond me. The stench of unwashed skin is precisely what I’m trying to avoid, and if I’ve just showered and shaved, the last thing I want is a fragrance that instantly reverses my progress. This won’t get you a date. It won’t impress your significant other—because there isn’t a woman in America who wants her man to smell like this. It doesn’t even work as some highbrow intellectual exercise, because no amount of Ego can override the lizard brain screaming that this smells spoiled and vaguely hazardous. Sloth isn’t just a bad perfume—it’s a joke. Dollar store body spray is more useful, more desirable, more respectable.

Elephant (Zoologist)

Released in 2017, Elephant is one of Chris Bartlett's compositions, he of Pell Wall Perfumes, and I have to say, it's not bad. It also happened to be an Art & Olfaction Awards Finalist of 2018. The notes listed are tree leaves, darjeeling tea, magnolia, cocoa, coconut milk, incense, jasmine, woods, amber, musk, patchouli, and sandalwood. I can detect every single one of these notes with clarity. Well done, Chris. 

The good: Elephant wears nicely. It opens with an aggressive accord of bitter greens, pungent cedar, magnolia, and jasmine, with a slightly sweet/skanky balance calibrated just right. The dominant note to my sniffer is jasmine blossom, a beautifully indolic and very floral-ambrosial nuance that penetrates every level of the fragrance's pyramid. Eventually the grounding notes of cocoa and coconut milk appear and smooth out the rough edges, leaving some of the smokiness of the tea and jasmine, which then morph into an incense and patchouli accord for depth. Rich, green, woody, relaxed. Very nice.

The bad: This stuff is linear as hell. After the first half hour, everything hits a stasis point, and the dynamism fizzles. I'm left with a woody-floral coconut musk that holds for hours and never dries out. Sounds okay, but you may find yourself wishing you could get your nose on the rather good sandalwood undergirding everything. Bartlett is a prominent member of Basenotes and a competent perfumer, but Elephant suffers from being a bit of a one-trick pony. Wrong animal there. 

Chameleon (Zoologist)

This one is kind of neat. It opens with sweet, tropical fruity-floral notes that smell like some sort of cheap skin lotion, then a waxy coconut oil dribbles in and freshens it up in a strange but satisfying way. There's a bit of sea salt, a bouquet of white and yellow florals (sort of a Frankenjasmine hybrid with ylang and frangipani involved), and a massive dose of silky-smooth Cashmeran to cover it in clean fuzz. I also like the holographic rainbow trim on the bottle's label, and for once the concentration of a Zoologist is adequately proportioned to lend the wear experience a pleasant and balanced feel.

The perfume industry has a term for the pigeonholing of a scent as fine fragrance: "skin note," which everyone understands to mean the human element that smells compatible with natural human skin and pheromones, and in Chameleon there is an intentional skin note that smells a little oily and salty, like fresh sweat but on a soap-scrubbed epidermis. There's also a Safranal note that lends a spicy-metallic edge to the sweetness and prevents it from being too overbearing. It's almost like they were going for an exotic suntan lotion here, or a spa oil that a masseuse would rub into your muscles on an island getaway somewhere in the Pacific. Things get a touch drier and smokier in the base when the patchouli takes over, about five hours in, but it doesn't dramatically alter the bright trajectory of the scent. This stuff is all casual fun.

Oddly I don't get much mango from Chameleon, despite all the copy claiming it's in there, nor do I have any bearing on other clear fruits in Daniel Pescio's fragrance. But make no mistake -- this is a sweet 'n sour tropical vacation sort of scent, one of those oddball "fresh" frags from the middle of the 1990s that came in a segmented bottle with blue-green juice and weirdly-shaped cap, before the 2000s wave of new perfumery tech liberated the market from gummy and overly sweet zombie brand fare. I'm not sold on Zoologist fragrances, but Chameleon is interesting, wearable, and, well, smells good. 

Rhinoceros (Zoologist)

Gentleman’s Club fragrances ruled the 1980s, but Cool Water toppled their dominance, and Acqua di Gio sealed their fate. By the late 1990s, few dared to replicate the style, leaving woody tobaccos and patchoulis to linger as relics of a bygone era. As the new millennium began, these notes found refuge in the niche perfumery world, and eventually led to Prin Lomros’s 2020 reissue of Rhinoceros.

The more I wear Zoologist fragrances, the more their mission crystallizes: resurrect the classic, complex masculines of the past and transform them into animal-themed haute parfumerie at $100 an ounce. If you’re a devotee of vintage greats like the original Davidoff (1984), Bogart’s Furyo (1988), or Vermeil for Men (1995), Rhinoceros will feel like liquid Xanadu. Lomros has packed the composition with leather, incense, chocolatey patchouli, cypriol, oakmoss, and oud, with each note discernible yet blended into a saturnine olfactory sienna. To Western noses, it reads unmistakably “masculine.”

I used to wear fragrances like this daily, and truthfully, they are wonderful. It’s hard to fault the seamless accords of whiskey, rum, Connecticut shade, and oak. Even the slightly skanky oud is palatable. Yet, as much as I admire its artistry, Rhinoceros feels like a time capsule. Imagining it worn in 2025, when the world and its men have moved on, is a stretch. I applaud Zoologist for boldly releasing something so unapologetically “1987,” but I caution any young buck against believing this will captivate today’s woman. Times have changed, even as the memory of this style endures.

Obsession for Men -- Oops! I Mean, Musk Deer (Zoologist)

This 2020 creation from Zoologist, crafted by Pascal Gaurin, senior perfumer at IFF, immediately transported me back to the 1990s. Now, for those of you who’ve been following my writing for some time, I’m aware that my frequent nostalgic musings about this era might be a bit much. But I stand by it: the 1980s and 1990s were a golden age of cultural innovation, and I often find myself yearning for the heady days when fashion, music, and fragrance had a particular magic. One standout from that time was Calvin Klein's Obsession for Men, a balsamic oriental fragrance rich with resins and spices that exuded a "grown-up" sophistication without veering into stuffy territory. Though the fragrance has been reworked over the years, its essence remains intact, albeit a few notes lighter than I remember. (For this reason, I haven't purchased a new bottle.) 

Obsession wasn’t merely a fragrance; it was an olfactory phenomenon, a marketing blitz that was impossible to ignore. From every magazine cover to every television ad, Kate Moss, scantily clad, if at all, stared provocatively back at me, stirring up all the hormonal chaos of a teenage boy. The scent, an "adult" oriental, was paired with imagery of waifish women caught between raw sensuality and a hint of rebellion. It was an audacious marketing strategy, but undeniably effective, selling a dream of dangerous allure. Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that Obsession was just a little bit aspirational, like even those who wore it might have done better with something just a touch more refined. But there was no such version until now.

Pascal Gaurin answered the likely implicit call of creative director Victor Wong to reimagine Obsession, and the result is Musk Deer, a fragrance that takes the foundations of Klein’s iconic oriental and elevates them with the finest materials available. Gaurin, having crafted eleven fragrances for Calvin Klein, clearly knows Obsession inside and out. He has, in essence, "Creedified" it, giving us a scent that is both familiar and refreshingly new. Musk Deer is a stunning, crisp oriental that channels the rich amber and animalic-floral notes of the original, while introducing a new complexity through layers of cedar, labdanum, patchouli, and a delicate touch of natural Laos oud. At the heart of this composition is a luminous Sambac jasmine absolute, which infuses the fragrance with a velvety, almost intoxicating sensuality. It's a cheap-in-a-fun-way smell done with an unlimited budget. 

Among the entire Zoologist collection, this fragrance feels the most wearable to me. In fact, it’s the one I’m seriously considering purchasing. Obsession has always held a special place in my heart, and I’ve long hoped for something that could take its core concept and refine it. With Musk Deer, I’ve finally found that dream realized. Much like the original Obsession, this fragrance evokes a strangely alluring fantasy: a vision of youthful, ethereal women existing in a quiet, almost surreal world of sterile, colorless advertisements, where the only thing that matters is how good they smell. Spray on Musk Deer, and it’s the 1990s once again. Only this time, I’m ready for the ride.

Harvest Mouse (Zoologist)

The oriental category of fragrances ("oriental" meaning "of the East" in classical perfumery terms and not a slur, contrary to the idiocy of the language police) has never been my favorite. If you've been reading me long enough, you know that I tend to wear them the least, generally avoid buying them, and despite all that has happened since the 1930s, Old Spice is still my favorite oriental scent, and the most worn. So I approached Harvest Mouse fully expecting to feel about it as I do about all expensive fragrances in its price bracket: impressed, but not enough to buy or wear. 

As it turns out, I'm not even impressed. This 2023 fragrance is by Luca Maffei of Houbigant and Jacques Fath fame, and my expectation was it would smell like something that belongs in the Pineward range, only better. Well, I was half right. It belongs in the Pineward range, only it isn't any better, and might even be a little worse. It starts out promisingly enough, with a pleasant burst of warm citrus (bergamot studded with cloves), sweetened a bit by a floral orange blossom and chamomile that eventually gets sweeter and more vanillic, to the point of feeling strident. I think it's the novel accord of "Beer Extract CO₂" that ruins it. It smells biting and sharp, malty-sour but also sweet, and it evokes the feeling you have after having one too many. I give it points for uniqueness, though. 

The base, which arrives about five hours in, is a more balanced and enjoyable ensemble of woody notes, namely cedar, some light balsamic accents, the tonka-like plushness of hay absolute, and the aforementioned vanilla, which has lost the disturbing angles and now simply smells smooth and edible. If you are not like I am, and you absolutely love woody-fresh oriental fragrances, I think Harvest Mouse will appeal, but for those of you who already have anything like a Pineward or Bogart or vintage Lagerfeld fragrance in your collection, you probably won't need anything here. 

Hummingbird (Zoologist)

Shelley Waddington of En Voyage Perfumes is the nose behind this 2015 creation. To date, only Squid rivals it as the Zoologist fragrance that required a full body scrub—and a shirt hurled straight into the washing machine. Here's the twist: I actually like it. This is a niche reimagining of Joop! Homme, that iconic Bourdon fragrance with the pink juice and purple box. As such, it fascinates me, answering a question I didn’t know I had: what would Joop! smell like, all dressed up in luxe materials and compositionally refined?

The answer is Hummingbird. Joop! Homme is intensely floral, but in a particular way—super sweet, heavy, yet somehow evocative of delicate petals. That buoyant sweetness, I realized, comes primarily from lilac, mimosa, and heliotrope, all crammed together into an unfocused 8-bit version of a spring bouquet. In Hummingbird, those notes are far more distinct, with greater textural finesse. Every flower stands out, yet works harmoniously to create that unmistakable magenta sweetness. The lilac is especially bright and clear, nestled with rose, a honeysuckle reconstruction, a few grams of heliotropin, mimosa that actually smells alive, and warm ylang-ylang, all cushioned atop a thermonuclear musk accord powerful enough to rival national defense systems.

As lovely as it smells, like Joop!, it’s simply too strong. So strong that neither my girlfriend nor I could tolerate it for long. The moment we got home, I jumped in the shower. Even after a vigorous scrub with Irish Spring, the fragrance clung to my skin. I’m convinced it has a half-life of eleven thousand years after just a tiny spritz on clothing—and half that on skin. If you love sweet florals and don’t mind that the rest of the block might have mixed feelings, go for it. Otherwise, for the love of all things, proceed with caution.

Chipmunk (Zoologist)

I often hang a Little Trees air freshener in my car called "True North," and after a long workday, I find its crisp, snowy, slightly piney aroma soothing. It’s one of the longer-lasting Little Trees scents and smells more authentically pine-like than the classic green tree, which always reminds me of a rubber Halloween mask. Whenever I catch a whiff of "True North," I wonder if it’s cold, foresty aromas in general that calm me. It’s hard to say. Push pine notes too far and you end up with something like Stirling Soap’s Evergreen Forest, which can be downright jarring.

Pia Long’s 2021 fragrance for Zoologist, Chipmunk, leans more into hazelnuts but carries a few other notes that give me a "True North" vibe in the best possible way. For starters, the fragrance’s note list is one of the most accurate I’ve ever seen. Not sure about the quince, but I definitely detect a crystal-clear accord of pink pepper, mandarin orange, cardamom, and nutmeg at the top. This quickly settles into a grassy chamomile-hazelnut heart, layered over fir balsam, oak, and what they call "earthy notes"—really just synthetic oakmoss with a drop or two of natural patchouli oil.

The weakest link in matching the pyramid to the notes list is the base, which cites amyris, cedar, benzoin, vetiver, opoponax, guaiacwood, and "animal notes." Honestly, I mostly get the benzoin and opoponax, with maybe a soft touch of animalic musk, nothing like the assertive stuff found in other Zoologist creations. The overall effect is earthy, piney, and nutty-woody, with cold air swirling over warm campfires and hazelnut toast being passed around. It feels painterly, like something out of a Pieter Bruegel the Elder scene. On the strip, the terpenic notes sing out more. Chipmunk is one of Zoologist’s better fragrances, and it’s perfect for a crisp fall day looking ahead to winter. 

Camel (Zoologist)

Image by Bryan Ross

Creating a fragrance that balances classical elegance with sensual allure is one of the most challenging tasks in perfumery. If the scent leans too much toward the classical, it risks feeling stuffy; if it pitches too far toward the sensual, it can seem overtly provocative. But when the balance is perfect, the fragrance evokes the image of an unknown woman -- beautiful, vulnerable, timeless, and mysterious. Christian Carbonnel's specialty is Middle Eastern orientals, with a portfolio spanning dozens of rich, resinous, floral, and oud-laden perfumes, so it comes as little surprise that he's the nose behind Camel (2017). This is an excellent fragrance, and, surprisingly, it doesn't try too hard to impress.

I feel a zing of delight upon first spraying it, as it rings out with a bright chord of Nag Champa incense, spicy myrrh, and soft orange zest—just enough to give the first fifteen minutes a freshness and roundness I've only encountered in pricier orientals. There's a palm date note in the pyramid; I'm not sure what that smells like, but my guess is it's the honeyed sweetness that mingles with the heart of amber, cedar, and orange blossom (the zest gradually deepens into the flower), yet I can make out cinnamon, civetone, rose, sandalwood, and tonka bean clearly in the drydown. Camel has a crystalline depth and quality, with every note perfectly balanced, every accord seamlessly connected, and every whiff a pleasure to experience. The Nag Champa aspect lingers throughout, but the way Carbonnel blended the synthetic civet with the florals and woods feels exotic and sultry, despite being standard oriental fare.

The sexiness here is likely in the musks, but to me, Camel reads as an updated take on classics like Arpège and Tabu, with enough classical poise that it never becomes gauche. There are no sharp angles in Camel; the structure is an assemblage of the many curvatures of resins and fibers, the gentle textures of floral softness against woody rasp, with the civet note lending a seductive skank that is sure to attract at least a few animals in the night. If you're familiar with Furyo by Jacques Bogart, you could consider that fragrance a masculine counterpart to Camel, which leans slightly unisex with a feminine tilt due to the prominent florals (rose, jasmine, orange blossom) and its unyielding brightness. This is one of the better offerings in the Zoologist line, and I'm here for it. Good stuff.

Bee (Zoologist)

In the past decade, there has been a renewed interest in vanilla and tonka fragrances. And when I say "vanilla and tonka," I mean popped-collar, slicked hair, dude-bro, chad-swaggering clubber juice, with all eyes on the prize, if you get me. The sensitive, introspective, soul-searching, manna-eating perfumes for humble people.

If you want the proletariat or petite bourgeoisie version, Azzaro and Thierry Mugler have you covered with their The Most Wanted and A*Men frags, which are basically sweetened woody tonkas on steroids. For an aristocratic touch, opt for something by Guerlain or Zoologist, particularly Cristiano Canali's Bee from the latter. Bee adopts a similarly dense sweetness, using materials that smell far sturdier than others, while creating a comparable scent cloud of "Hey, look at me!" For $175, you too can smell like a bird catcher. 

It's easy to get caught up in Zoologist's slightly gimmicky marketing and view Bee as a studied reconstruction of honeybee wax and queen pods brimming with royal jelly. Perhaps that's what Canali intended to convey—and to some extent, I think he succeeds. But let's not miss the forest for the trees. This is sweet swank for guys, crafted to help them attract whoever they're pursuing. If you're looking for the finest in that genre, here it is. 

Macaque (Zoologist)

Sarah McCartney is the perfumer for 4160 Tuesdays, a brand she founded several years ago. It has, by my count, four thousand, one hundred and sixty perfumes, so the name is fitting. I’ve never smelled anything by Sarah before, and approached Macaque with an open mind, hoping for the best as always. I have to say, my mind isn't as open as it was pre-Macaque. I don't care for this fragrance. Frankly, I hate it.

I'm not exactly sure what I'm smelling, but it’s a note I've encountered before in a dozen niche perfumes, including some from the Zoologist line. It’s a resinous, incense-like, spicy-woody accord that I believe is pre-made, similar to the classic bases used by perfumers and industry figures like Bernard Chant and Ernest Shiftan. It has a distinct olibanum characteristic, yet there’s also a silvery incense facet that dries down to a funky, incense-infused church pew wood note. It's overbearing and whenever it's in a fragrance, it's pretty much the whole fragrance. It's here in Macaque, and McCartney threw in a soapy jasmine reconstruction to try and balance it, but no dice. Overall, and within the context of having encountered this accord many times before (don't ask me which fragrances, I couldn't tell you after having smelled over seven hundred of them), I'm calling it and saying it's a bullshit move for a perfumer to use it. 

You're not creating a perfume; you're sandwiching this monster base between two tiddlywinks notes of green apple and Hedione, with some Jasmone and a few other pricey floral musks. Despite all efforts to make it smell crisp and fresh, it actually comes across as heavy and balsamic, like some kind of oriental fragrance that fell out of the sky and landed on a store shelf in 1961. I wouldn't want a bottle of this—my girlfriend found it disgusting after one sniff, and enough already with these weird resinous perfumes.

Dragonfly Edition 2021 (Zoologist)

I recently wrote a review for Club de Nuit Sillage on Fragrantica in which I mentioned that I think Armaf bullshits its customers with misleading "note pyramids," perhaps to shift their attention away from whatever they're cloning. In the case of CdNS, the pyramid is identical to Silver Mountain Water, yet they embellish it with claims that it contains violet leaf and various florals. Meanwhile, all I smell is citrus, green tea, blackcurrant, light woods, ambergris, and musk. Pretty much identical to vintage SMW. 

Zoologist would be well served to avoid the Armaf game, and just tell people what their fragrances are about in straightforward language. Parsing the pyramid for Dragonfly is almost as difficult as reading the bible; there are too many things listed that I do not smell, and several things that wallop the nose but don't appear in the literature. The company cites twenty notes, but I only smell angelica and citrus in the top, geranium and rose in the mid with a little more citrus, and a very sheer musk in the base. The fragrance reads as a reconstruction of a wild rose, perhaps Rosa rugosa, a species with an incredible lemony-fresh scent that illuminates gardens and carries for miles, exactly the sort of natural and beautiful floral that someone like Céline Barel would wear (and the polar opposite of her horrendous Squid), an approachable and unisex rose that smells natural. Great!

I would quibble with the price, as I often do with Zoologist, but a full bottle of this smells like it's worth it to me. How many natural wild rose fragrances are there? How many smell so literally and kinetically like the actual flower? The green-bramble theme of the fragrance is deceptively difficult to get right, as the richness of the flower can overshadow the twiggier underpinnings of the bush itself, yet Barel manages to capture the vibe of the entire plant, and she makes it look easy. Dragonfly 2021 is well worth it, and one of a kind. 

Cow (Zoologist)

Society is abuzz with talk of putting things out to pasture, so I thought it would be a good time to review Cow by Zoologist. This one is by Nathalie Feisthauer, author of Aramis Havana (1994), Vent Vert by Balmain (the 1999 formula), and Must de Cartier pour Homme (2000). She made her name on those, and has since put out respectable things for various houses, some of which are pretty obscure. Valeur Absolue? A-chromiq? July of St Barth? Uh-huh. Okay. Can I just take a moment to say that the number of recondite niche brands is beginning to get scary. Either perfume development is way easier than I think, or folks are just pitching overpriced crap in expensive bottles. The veritable galaxy cluster of new and obscure niche brands has become udderly impossible to navigate, pun intended. Zoologist looks like Guy Laroche in comparison to much of what's out there. 

Cow is Feisthauer in a bucolic mood, a likable entry in the brand catalog that smells more approachable and comfortable than anything else in Victor Wong's stable. Juicy green apple top note. Smooth and unsweetened vanilla/milk accord. A rustle of sage. A whisper of green grass. Eventually, a mellow floral tone, soft and well-balanced against the resilient milky notes, which are so anodyne and soothing that I think I could wear this to bed. True to its name, Cow conjures imagery of rolling green fields speckled with bovines, some lounging in tall grasses, eternally chewing and chewing. Of course, anyone with any experience in agriculture knows that the true smell of cows is cow shit; I spent years in Ireland trying to get the stench out of my nose, and I never got used to it. Green Irish Tweed is a wonderful fantasy -- if only the reality came anywhere close to it! 

But back to Cow: Look, I'm going to level with you here. I like it, but I don't think it's worth the money Zoologist asks for it -- not even close. Its green apple is nice, and it lasts a while, penetrating two hours into the early drydown before diffusing into other constituents, but if I want green apple, or any apple, I have designer frags for pennies on the dollar that get the job done just as well. Donna Karan has a thing or two to say about cheap but realistic apple. The chem Feisthauer used is perhaps a bit livelier, but negligibly so. Creation Thé Vert by Ted Lapidus puts another very similar spin on this structure of fruity-green and milky, although in Creation the milkiness is textural, and not a rendition of lactones. I will commend the perfumer for mating green to milky-vanillic, always a winning combo in my book, and I reach for Caron pour un Homme when I want it at its apotheosis. Although back in 2011, there was this pleasant little thing by Bath & Body Works called Country Chic that hit the mark as well (about $40, if memory serves). 

Dodo Jackfruit Edition (Zoologist)

One of the things you learn about perfumery when you become a bonafide enthusiast is that note pyramids are usually bullshit. There are notes stated and notes smelled, and usually they don't jive. I tend to look for pyramid notes that a five year-old can smell to see if I can detect them first, and worry about the weirder stuff later. I have no idea what jackfruit smells like, and I don't really care, as there's also lavender and turmeric listed in the literature. What matters to me is that I find a Zoologist scent that is versatile and well-made (Cockatiel is a little too special for that). Where is this brand's daily driver fragrance, the one to enjoy without overthinking, the "dumb reach?" 

There are three versions of Zoologist's Dodo -- the original from 2019 (a controversial scent), the reissue of 2020, and the Jackfruit Edition -- and I'm left wondering why Victor Wong can't just stick to the original fragrance. Imagine if every brand did this; Xerjoff comes out with "Mefisto 2024 Edition" and ditches the original, leaving Mefisto fans to wonder what they should think now of Mefisto, and of Xerjoff. Creed says, "Say goodbye to 2010 Aventus and hello to 'Aventus Maple Edition,'" and you can anticipate outrage among Aventus fans. So how is it that Zoologist can habitually nudge its fragrances into the bin and replace them with new editions? Is there no loyalty to any of these perfumes? Anyway, I sense that Jackfruit Edition is not a replacement, but a mere flanker to the replacement, which has also been discontinued by the way, so I guess it's better than nothing. If there are any fans of the original Dodo, or Dodo 2020, or Bat, or Panda, or Cardinal, or Dragonfly, you're screwed. But at least you have Dodo Jackfruit Edition.

This latest iteration smells the most like a potential "signature" masculine. It opens with a fizzy tropical fruit sweetness, blended closely with an aldehydic green material evocative of galbanum, but brighter and more sheer. This rapidly gives way to a turmeric note mated to a pleasant lavender that smells plush and a bit doughy, and eventually everything slides into a smooth hum of lavender, tonka, and orris. Yves Cassar is the man behind it all, he of Tom Ford for Men fame, and you can feel the touch of a man who knows what men like, as Jackfruit Edition is no less than a proper modern aromatic fougère that wears luxuriously but comfortably. Points to Cassar for integrating turmeric into an otherwise familiar structure and proving that sometimes you really can trust the pyramid. 

Seahorse (Zoologist)

Julien Rasquinet, the man behind Creed's Acqua Originale range, was tapped for this one, and I approached it with all the trepidation imaginable after smelling Zoologist's Squid, otherwise known as Victor Wong's idea of an aquatic. The pyramid for Seahorse is a bit more conventional: cardamom, fennel, and ambrette on top, clary sage and white florals in the mid, and a woody base of vetiver, rounded off with "algae absolute" and ambergris. How bad could it be? 

Not bad at all, actually. There's a briefly generic quality to Seahorse that is immediately apparent at first spray, which screams 2000s DRUGSTORE AQUATIC at the top of its lungs, and I'm nonplussed during that stage. My brain immediately goes to, "What the fuck, another one of these overpriced designer frags put out by a niche label!" The salty ozonic "fresh" chems are all there and accounted for, smelling marine-like and sour with just a hint of nondescript sweetness to tame the wild surf. I might as well just go to Burlington and grab any blue bottle issued between 2001 and 2012, and save myself money. If you're into fragrances, you've smelled this before. Many, many, many times before. Even though it smells okay, you don't want to spend more than twenty bucks for it. It's sneaker juice incarnate. You're at Orange Julius flirting with a random girl before going to see a movie. You're twenty-two years old again. 

Five minutes into the drydown, all the bad nostalgia disappears, and my nose perks up. There's something else going on here; something different in the ensuing accords, something very good. Fennel, clary sage, and neroli, with powdery-clean notes, and then, two hours later, a mineralic-green effect that dances with all the common designer chems of the opening, lending Seahorse extra dimension, extra life. The base is a quiet amber, and longevity sucks (five hours), but honestly? Not bad, not bad at all. 

Cockatiel (Zoologist)

I find the backstory to Cockatiel interesting: Perfumer Sven Pritzkoleit formulated it years ago for his own perfume brand, SP Parfums, and named it Powder and Dust. His business shut down, but he sold the Powder and Dust formula to Zoologist so it could live on. It won the 2019 Arts and Olfaction award in the Artisan category, a clue to its excellence. I wore it for a day, and let me tell you, they were right. It's a good one. No, scratch that. It's better than "good." Cockatiel is great. Full stop. 

I had my doubts. The note pyramid is a strange hybrid of unusual and uninteresting: a top of champagne, raspberry, rhubarb; a mid of mimosa, "powdery notes," Cashmeran; a base of guiac, patchouli, vanilla, musk. Oh, and cockatiel absolute, distilled from the finest hand-picked cockatiels (that's in the fine print). I jest; the company makes a point of mentioning that all notes are synthetic, and the perfume does not use animal anything to make it smell great. And great it smells, opening with a crystalline accord of fine white wine with a hint of berry tartness and a subtle bitter-greenness that emerges as a vague impression of raw rhubarb. This is followed soon after by the fluffiest, gentlest, sweetest mimosa/acacia on the commercial market. It's soft and powdery, a little woody, and so breathtakingly expansive and dimensional that it quite literally hugs the air around me. Incredible. 

Seven hours later, at a low hum, this sweet yellow floral accord remains as it was, then gets sweeter still, as hints of vanilla tinge the outer edges of its powdery dream. I'm not one who often succumbs to sentimental jelly reviews, but Prtizkoleit crafted something so beautifully affecting here that words escape me. Cockatiel smells like a departure from the Zoologist brand because it wasn't a Zoologist creation to begin with. Thus, I view the fragrance as more of a reflection of Pritzkoleit's genius than of Victor Wong's curation; any niche executive worth his salt would jump on the opportunity to acquire an Arts and Olfaction winner and call it their own. With that said, kudos to Zoologist and to Wong for keeping this masterpiece in production. Cockatiel is full-bottle worthy.

Nightingale (Zoologist)

Luca Turin's fawning review of this fragrance has me utterly baffled. He acts like it's a difficult structure to figure out, saying he had to spray it on several strips to fully understand how perfumer Tomoo Inaba managed this 2016 release. Victor Wong hired a "self-taught" perfumer, so there's that. Turin considers it a technical marvel of a floral, giving it high marks (that part I get). Oddly enough, this one couldn't be easier for me. I recognized what was happening fifteen seconds after first applying it, and my opinion hasn't changed since, notable only insofar as it's the first Zoologist fragrance that seems clear-cut to me (I had an "Ah-Ha!" moment). That isn't saying much; I'm not sure what this brand is trying for. But I'll keep wearing Zoologist frags until I figure it out. 

Put simply, Nightingale is a revamping of Guerlain's Mitsouko, a blatant throwback chypre in which peach lactone is cleverly substituted with the dry and shaded sweetness of plum blossom. Tomoo cushions his muted florals between starched bergamot on top and a woody labdanum and oakmoss below. Where Mitsouko is about moss, Nightingale leans on resins, with rich sandalwood and incense lending accents of fire and a puff of smoke, and just a smidgen of synthetic oud to round out. I get a fleeting impression of bready iris, which vanishes in the first few seconds of wear, and an unusual, borderline unpleasant Ivory soap effect an hour into the drydown. There's also an uneven feeling to the florals eight hours in (this stuff has nuclear longevity), making it not quite as pristine as Turin makes it sound, at least to me. Some of the balance between soapy-sweet floral and dry/bitter chypre just feels a little . . . off. Still, it smells classical and wearable. 

I'm not sure I understand Turin when it comes to his idea of "technical" greatness. Nightingale doesn't even smell all that original. Mitsouko is one of the most copied perfumes out there, second only to Cool Water. The composition merely relies on clever note switcheroos, swapping out Guerlain's Frenchiness with Tomoo's orientalism. There's a pleasant little bouquet of violet and rose mated closely to bergamot, which is interesting, and here the perfumer is to be commended for resisting the urge to sweeten everything, as the fragrance remains old-school in feel. But frankly I find Nightingale a bit boring, in a different way from Tiger, which was simply too one-note vetiver. Here the dullness is in familiarity, and the nagging feeling that if I wanted to do this, and do it just a little better, I could wear Mitsouko and call it a day.