Ébène Fumé (Tom Ford)

Every few years, a fad fragrance note comes along that doesn't really work. Back in the 2000s, it was "rice," appearing in stuff like Kenzo's Amour, Creed's Love in White, and Miller et Bertaux's A Quiet Morning, and I never thought it smelled that great. Lately it's been Palo Santo, which, while a wonderful smell, is proving to be difficult for perfumers to pull off. It's super strong, and tends to hijack a composition. Never one to shy from a challenge, Tom Ford hired Rodrigo Flores-Roux, and went for it with Ébène Fumé. 

Every precious wood has its bad side, and the vaguely pickle-like off-notes of palo santo seem to overshadow its better features. But Ébène Fumé does something clever, and presents its freshly-sawed dill-by-fours alongside a fresh and discreet incense. All I get when I smell this perfume is intense palo santo for the first few minutes, hyper-realistic and three dimensional, and I have to pull back a little. You must truly love palo santo to invest in this. However, it tames pretty quickly, and when incense comes forward, it's clear that Flores-Roux has made palo santo palatable (say that three times fast). I don't know if I'd wear it, but Ébène Fumé winds up smelling very nice. 

After a few hours, the main notes on my skin are still palo santo with a hint of incense and just a touch of labdanum. There's a brief stage of amber and smokier resins, which help to nuance the laser-focused woody notes, but it doesn't last. It's tempting to think Ébène Fumé is too loud, but I think it's merely stolid, a firm, focused, and eminently well made piece that takes a route less traveled, the sign of a true niche perfume. 

Mûre et Musc (L'Artisan Parfumeur)

L'Artisan Parfumeur is one of those early niche lines from the seventies that reached peak popularity in the 2000s, and has since seen its cache descend under the tide of overpriced crap that has arisen since. I remember the rampant enthusiasm for L'Artisan fragrances on Basenotes between 2008 and 2013, right when the oud craze fully took hold, and I thought it was an esoteric brand that was only interesting to me because I had no interest in it. Maybe it was all the fawning praise for stuff like Méchant Loup and Dzing!, which were fun to read about, but failed to inspire me. Or perhaps it was that L'Artisan was "niche," but not really that expensive, and I was snobbily rejecting anything priced at less than a hundred dollars an ounce. I found it strange that Jean Laporte had created a brand, only to leave it four years later, and create Maître Parfumeur et Gantier to compete with it. Seems like something a CEO of an automaker in Detroit would do.

He released Mûre et Musc eau de toilette in 1978, and it is one of several L'Artisan works that has survived the decades relatively intact. Touted as a novel accord of blackberry and clean musk, the composition is every bit like a seventies drugstore musk, and is evocative of Jōvan Musk, smelling sharp, soapy, and acrid, which you'd expect from something much cheaper. This pungent bell-bottoms-in-a-bottle is rapidly ensconced in a tart blackberry note, which only smells like actual fruit for fifteen or twenty seconds before devolving into a basic sweetness that hums alongside the sweet muskiness. There's a serious Saturday morning cartoons vibe here. The competing polarities of sweetness form a sort of soft, fuzzy-purple shampoo effect, a touch cozy and kitschy, and easy to like. It's cool, a tad raunchy, and not as transparent as I thought it would be. 

I think I could get into Mûre et Musc if it weren't for things like Jōvan Musk and Monsieur Musk, which are infinitely cheaper and more durable. L'Artisan's longevity is middling in the EDT concentration, and I get about four to five hours before it turns into a barely-there whisper. During that mediocre duration, it's already pretty weak and unimposing, and smells like it would be hard to apply too much. More importantly, it smells like something I can get for far less money, which is annoying at these price points: $145 for 100 ml, which isn't exactly mind-blowing money, but enough to want more. Weirdly, Afnan's Supremacy in Heaven smells more complex and expensive, and costs $115 less. I guess you could argue that Mûre et Musc preceded many of the designer musks of the eighties, and thus its pedestrian quality is a feature and not a bug, but I still want my moolah back. 

Itasca (Lubin)

Photo by Bryan Ross

Fall is here, and nothing takes me to Minnesota lake country more than Lubin's vetiver fragrance, Itasca. Just kidding, I don't get anything remotely Minnesotan about it, but apparently people from Itasca County are wont to toss their two cents about how familiar they are with the many "manly" smells of country living, and how close this frag gets to it. Personally, I find Itasca (the perfume) to be a sweet, only mildly woody ensemble of fruits and aromatics, but what do I know? I've only been to Minnesota once. 

I must admit, I don't quite get this one. Luca Turin calls it a "Nice lemony vetiver," and the lemon note registers for all of .3 seconds to my nose, a mere blip of aldehyde off the tippy-top. He also calls it a fougère, and yet I detect no lavender. Reviewers on Fragrantica and Basenotes claim it smells piney and green, but to me it feels sweet, as if its big mandarin orange and massive juniper berry melded into a hybridized red apple note, loaded with pectins and sugars. I do get some juniper in isolation, but it weaves through other things to form this ghostly apple that dominates the whole trajectory. Weird. 

I guess you could say there's a bit of vetiver in the base, but by that point in its evolution, Itasca gets more pointedly "green" and piney, and it's tough to say if vetiver is the dominant note. I do get a clutch of woody notes, some sweet, some very dry, and there's definitely a cedar note tucked in there, but ultimately it all reads as fruity and fresh, like a postmodern take on a generic-guy nineties masculine. I agree with Luca Turin, it's "very presentable," and it's perfect for apple-picking in October, but I doubt this was what Lubin intended it for. Altogether a good fragrance, but polite, unadventurous, forgettable. 

Gendarme (Gendarme)

This is one of the few perfumes I've worn where the exact release date is unclear. Basenotes says 1983; Parfumo says 1991. Fragrantica says nothing. Overall, it smells more nineties than eighties to me, though its base reminds me just a little of Dana's Monsieur Musk, with the animalic parts pared down to almost nothing. 

I have difficulty with Gendarme eau de cologne. A lot of difficulty, actually. It's a bit of an oddity, in that it aims squarely at "cologne" and "fresh," without smelling like either thing. Surprisingly, it comes across as musty and sour to me, almost like mildew. It opens with an explosion of raw alcohol, and the first minute is pretty dismal. It then develops into barely detectable notes of lemony citrus, dried herbs and florals, and adopts a gauzy glow of snowy laundry detergent chems that travel in little clutches of plastic soap bubbles. 

This fakey-soapy aura is strong enough to go nose-blind to, yet evanescent enough that smelling it feels subliminal. There's so little meat on these bones, and aside from an amorphous white musk, Gendarme feels anemically underdeveloped and compositionally unchallenging. All the notes are bare ghosts: wispy citruses, fleeting hints of herbs, maybe a trace of spearmint? A hint of camphoraceous clove? Thin sketches of white florals, like a pencil outline of lily and jasmine and maybe muguet, all lost behind an ivory veil. It smells like I'm wearing a vinyl raincoat. It doesn't smell good. I wouldn't want a bottle. 

And speaking of a bottle, what's with the price? One dollar per milliliter, for a total of $120 per bottle? Of this stuff? What are the Gendarme people smoking, and where can I get some? Perhaps it's an availability thing, but it doesn't matter to me. I find the whole washed-out experience underwhelming. Our senators and state reps can keep it. 

La Tulipe (Byredo)

Photo by Vanja Kovac

Some perfumers express "greenness" by constructing a pyramid that is representative of green things, like moss, grass, green herbs, bitter pine. Other perfumers, like Jérôme Epinette, approach it from a more peripheral angle, and opt to incorporate notes that coalesce into a color-coded experience that isn't necessarily found in nature. 

La Tulipe is an example of the latter approach. It starts with a studiedly muted citrus accord, more lemongrass than lemon, and rapidly morphs into the gauzy-green smell of dewey stems wrapped up in a grocery store fridge. There's a little rosy sweetness in back, the fantasy concept of what a tulip might smell of, if it had a smell, or what its chilled niche actually smells of instead. It is paradoxically an unmistakable yet nondescript headspace, a bit powdery and cold, green and plant-like, and only lightly touched by a romantic bouquet aura. It doesn't change much, doesn't really move over the course of eight hours, but it doesn't need to; it smells great. Byredo focused their brief on a specific thing that we all know to be true, but have never encountered outside of a florist shop.

This is the sort of direct beauty that I wish I could find everywhere, but alas, not since Jacomo's original Silences have I smelled something as starkly green as La Tulipe is. Silences is heavier, with foggy layers of oak moss, denser florals, and intense orris, while Byredo's scent dispenses with the extra atmosphere, and just goes au naturale. Yes!

Vanille Extreme (Comptoir Sud Pacifique)

Photograph by Luna202

Comptoir Sud Pacifique means "Trading Post of the Pacific," and Vanille Extreme is part of their "Eaux de Voyage" collection, where the majority of their offerings are found. This is a niche brand, but it isn't a particularly expensive one, with most fragrances clocking in at well under a C-Note. Knowing this helped to temper my expectations of Vanille Extreme, but I'm still disappointed, and it irks me to think about it.

Vanilla fragrances became a thematic thing in the early twentieth century, then turned boring by midcentury, only to be revived again in the nineties and the wee hours of our current shitshow. Most of the classic vanillas that we consider "wearable" emerged from the nineties revival, and they were quite versatile, things like P&G's Old Spice, Le Male, Angel, Vanilla Fields, and Alyssa Ashley Vanilla, and all expressed the note in ways that didn't break the bank. Ethyl maltol took off in 1992, with Mugler's first Angel, and has since left its sticky traces everywhere, but its legacy is even stickier; the problem with Angel is that it incentivized perfumers to use ethyl maltol to excess in things that were meant to be "vanilla." Ethyl maltol smells like a big cloud of pink cotton candy (candyfloss), and not like sugared vanilla beans. While it certainly inhabits the same ballpark of creamy-lactonic desserts, it's a different animal altogether. I tend to get cranky when I'm expecting to smell vanilla, and instead I smell cake batter and candyfloss. It's like putting in for a good lavender scent, and getting hyacinth instead. Close, but no cigar.

Vanille Extreme makes this crucial error. One whiff, and I immediately thought of Alyssa Ashley's fragrance, which is identical in every way but concentration (the 1991 release is weaker). Vanille Extreme is just as frosting-like, and just as linear. This isn't such a bad thing, but if you're looking for a unique and realistic vanilla, this ain't it. Why is vanilla so hard to get right? If Breyers can do it, anyone can. I simply don't understand!

Supremacy in Heaven (Afnan)

Some day an Arabian perfumer will enlighten me as to why Creed's Silver Mountain Water is a "must clone" perfume in the UAE. Pierre Bourdon did two amazing things when he designed SMW: he authored a "fresh" olfactory profile, the likes of which had never been done before, and he got it right the first time. Since 1995, countless copies and spin-offs have exited the Emirates, a phenomenon I find fascinating. 

Afnan is a young brand, founded in 2007 by an entrepreneur named Imran Fazlani, and its street cred must be solid, as it has a Gajillion products across as many lines. Although it's always exciting to discover a competent Saudi perfume brand, they really are springing up like weeds, with a different "niche" line appearing virtually every month. If I had the bread to shop Dubai, I'd be spoiled for choice. So I approached Afnan fully expecting Supremacy in Heaven (2018) to blend in with Rasasi's Al Wisam Day, or Ajmal's Silver Shade, the same Mefisto-on-a-budget approach of mating a sweet pink berry note to metallic citruses and floral white musks. In short, a been there, done that scenario. But, ever the optimist, I told myself, what the heck? Let's try it. Having smelled Sillage, I figured another thirty dollar frag could possibly outdo its beleaguered template of nineties excess. 

Supremacy in Heaven is a very divergent take on the SMW theme. I'm struck by the high quality of materials and blending here. Instead of opting into synthetic "froot" sweetness, the perfumer chose realism by showcasing an intensely earthy, acidic, and slightly smoky blackcurrant note, and I must say, this is the clearest and most natural blackcurrant note I've ever smelled. It surpasses Silver Mountain Water with a multifaceted pissy-fruity naturalness. One could argue that this level of realism works against the fragrance because it's too on-the-nose, and the overall focus of the SMW profile is notably shifted to blackcurrant as a central player instead of peripheral in a Creed-style blend, but I might quibble with that point -- Afnan has a lot going on. 

I think it smells expensive and arguably more "niche-like" than its template. It's blended with a glacé accord of red grapefruit and mandarin, juicy and bright. The result is the effect of an "inky waterfall," as one Fragrantica reviewer put it. The astringency of the fragrance is notable, very crisp, tart, and green, and filled out by the rounded citrus on top, and a dry sencha note below. Definitely the "inkiest" SMW clone, and the most literal rendering of blackcurrant, citrus, and green tea. Nice work, though livelier on fabric than skin. 

Siberian Rose (Fragrance du Bois)

Fragrance du Bois has only been around for ten years, and in that time they've collaborated with a YouTube reviewer, released "pure ouds," and set a high standard for perfume packaging. I tend to look askance at brands that prioritize packaging over content, and even more so at those that partner with twenty-something females on YouTube for social media clout, but the firm employs fourteen well-known perfumers, so I figure there must be something there. Siberian Rose is part of their "Nature's Treasures" collection, which FdB says is "simply an original collection of hand-blended perfumes using only the finest and sustainably sourced natural ingredients." I read this, and had to know more.

Siberian Rose's opening is a very "natural" ehtyl maltol and pink pepper affair, which is an interesting combination, both sugary-sweet and piquantly sweet. The cotton-candy element dances with the spices in a way I've never smelled in nature. In that first minute, I'm wondering if I'm dealing with another Angel clone, but luckily my initial fears are unfounded, as eventually fir and oakmoss cut in, with a hint of cinnamon and leather in the periphery. The leather note intensifies and seems to become the main player, but that only lasts for fifteen minutes, after which a juicy pear note appears and envelopes everything in fruity esters. I find this stage interesting, because it presages a dry and somewhat powdery rose, and the rose hugs the fruit closely enough to imbue it with a woody and vaguely cidery tang. I've encountered this effect in other woody roses, like Guerlain's Rose Barbare, Azzaro's Acteur, and Banana Republic's Oud Mosaic. 

Perfumes that do rose the way these frags do rose are doing it right. Look, the smell of straight rose is pretty unmistakable, and it asks for artistry. Most brands turn to fruits and musks that turn the flower neon, but a few are smart enough to offer a more "grown-up" interpretation. We all like our standard-issue fruity florals, and there's nothing wrong with that. But eventually we need a dose of high culture, and Fragrance du Bois has followed the French chypre tradition of seventies haute couture to its logical endpoint, a stunning woody and mossy rose that isn't above having a little fun. 

Creed Broke People's Brains. I love it.

Perfume criticism is the bastard child of critical writing, although it has all the same smatterings of expository rumination and philosophical sermonizing as other, more popular forms. One of the things that struck me about the fragrance community when I first joined it is its collectively derogatory stance on the house of Creed. I thought it was inarguably strange that so many esteemed writers felt it was necessary to harp on what was Creed's relatively benign form of advertising: attributing perfumes to famous dead people. It was as if the act of citing a long-deceased queen as being a wearer of something like Jasmine Imperatrice Eugenie was a crime against humanity. How dare they besmirch the dead with such lies? And how dare Olivier suggest the perfumery began in 1760, when it clearly got its start in the 1970s? This cannot stand!

The truth is that it is wrong to lie about such things, but it's also wrong to question them to no end. When answers are available, our civic duty is to dig them up and hold them aloft for all to see. In the case of Creed, much digging was done, and several answers were found and revealed to the world. We now know that Olivier isn't really much of a perfumer. We know that Erwin isn't, either. And we know that Olivier didn't want to continue his family's tradition of tailoring clothing for the wealthy, and instead wished to invest in fine fragrance, which formally launched his career sometime in the early seventies. All of this has come to light, thanks in part to Gabe Oppenheim's The Ghost Perfumer: Creed, Lies, & the Scent of the Century, and in larger part to years of fanatical hand-wringing on social media and perfume threads. People have submitted photographs of Creeds from the seventies and eighties, and have gone to great lengths to figure out the family's "royal warrants," so in terms of its veracity, the brand now stands corrected. 

These are the ends to which Creed has been questioned, and there are precious few others outstanding. We still don't know who authored some of the earliest Creeds, and a number of the discontinued "Grey Cap" EDTs. We still don't know how much involvement Olivier really had in the development of the Millésime range, aside from his being an expert evaluator. Nobody has any clue about whether Olivier fairly paid his perfumers, and Oppenheim's logical inconsistencies and clear misreading of some of those facts puts his account in question. And when it comes to the brand itself, there is only so far back one can go before the haziness of time obscures every detail, at which point it is only right to say, "I don't know." Did Creed really start in the seventies? I don't know. Did Creed tailor fragrances for deceased kings and queens, as they seem to today? I don't know. Where did Royal English Leather come from? I don't know. How has Olivier managed to steer the ship so easily through the fraught waters of the contemporary beauty industry, to the tune of $3.7 billion? I don't know. Is he some kind of genius? I should know, but I don't. 

If openly admitting to having no firm knowledge of Creed's provenance in perfumery beyond the 1970s is our heuristic for understanding the Creed that exists today, it could easily be argued by critics that Creed wants it that way. After all, the less we know, the murkier the picture is, the easier it will be for the company to continue fibbing and exaggerating to further its financial gains. But in the absence of evidence that Creed's fragrance legacy preceded the Nixon-Ford administration, should I consider that evidence of absence? That Creed was never a part of the rich tapestry of perfumery that was being woven through the twentieth century? My biggest problem with this is, and has always been, their eau de toilette line. The "Grey Caps," as they're nicknamed by aficionados, seemed to spring out of nowhere. How did Royal Scottish Lavender come into being, if not by some old dusty recipe that Creed had tucked in the family album somewhere? What about Baie de Genièvre? Ambre Cannelle? Angelique Encens? 

And how exactly did Olivier kickstart the brand with so many gorgeous compositions? When has that ever happened to anything other than a house with a long legacy and plenty of practice? Olivier is being given more credit by his critics than they realize when they attribute his entire oeuvre to commercial malpractice and stolen valor. They're essentially saying that the man was brilliant enough to compile perfumers from the tops of their classes, and get them to formulate one beautiful olfactory piece after another, using only the highest quality materials, and all before niche perfumery was even a twinkle in the public's eye. You have to remember that the EDTs were all pre-nineties, and all very expensive, right out of the gate. Who was going to buy them if they didn't have the brand recognition and cache of their more formidable competitors, the Chanels, and Guerlains, and Diors? In what world does a guy with strictly a tailoring background just say, "I'm going to start a perfume business, and the first ten perfumes are all going to be minor masterpieces," and after he successfully realizes this goal, uses them to fund the company's growth through the following five decades? 

The lack of clarity there, coupled with the lack of credibility to the alternative view (that Creed is little more than a fragrant house of cards), has embedded itself in the subconscious of the fragrance community, and it irks them in their sleep. For example, take a look at the blogger "Kafkaesque," and his 2013 review of Aventus, in which he writes: 

"I think it's an extremely pleasant, elegant, refined fragrance that is also linear, simple, mundane, ultimately unexciting, and not worth the cost." 

These are the words of a broken brain. If a perfume is "extremely pleasant," and "extremely elegant," and "extremely refined," then it is, by that definition, very much worth the cost. It can't be those things, and also "linear," and "simple," and "mundane." Sorry, but no. It does not compute. His assertion is self-contradictory, and cancels itself out. Aventus can be the first three things, or it can be the last five things, but it can't be all eight of those things. The writer is clearly hedging here, but it's the worst kind of hedge, the one where he's afraid to say that he doesn't really understand something, and so he blames it for his own shortcomings, and damns it with faint praise. Aventus is a game-changer perfume that every brand since 2010 has chased after, but it's "unexciting, and not worth the cost." 

He isn't alone. When you peruse popular blogs, you find that their writers intentionally leave Creed out, or do the bare minimum acknowledgment of it. It's still en vogue to say that Creeds "don't last," even though saying that about a Creed is akin to taping a card that says "My nose doesn't work" to your forehead (Creeds are generally quite strong after proper maceration). It's the "Trumpification" of a brand, with Creed being the dreaded Orange Man, and no journalist worth his salt can be caught dead typing a positive word about it. Creed is the unlikable and obnoxious red-headed step child of the niche industry, and if you want to be taken seriously, make sure you shit all over the brand as much and as often as you possibly can without being overtly unlikable and obnoxious yourself. 

Am I suggesting that it's wrong to criticize Creed? Of course not. My point here today is to say that it's wrong to criticize Creed to no end, and it has been established that the end point of all knowledge, and all possibility of gleaning further knowledge, is Zeste Mandarine Pamplemousse. This first eau de toilette was packaged in vintage aftershave-style bottles that I used to see on eBay back in the 2000s, when Olivier was still trying to put his personal stamp on the brand, with the blue "Olivier Creed" label slapped on the front. Naysayers will point to Guerlain's royal offerings, and how they're inventoried in their historical glory at the Osmotheque in France, as if somehow Guerlain's path should have intersected with Creed's at some point, and we should be finding the exact same evidence there, when in fact we're not. The much simpler theory, that Creed perfumes from the early twentieth century and beyond were likely just private bespoke affairs, is never part of their lexicon, and for good reason - it makes too much sense. 

Armaf is Breaking People's Brains. I love it.

Armaf is doing very interesting things lately. I could get into the "how" of it, but the answer is simple: money. The UAE is an oil-rich country where the money is so abundant that it flows into stupid things, like cheap perfume. Thus, something like Club de Nuit Sillage, which costs ten dollars an ounce, can prompt Westerners to elide their thinking about genuinely exorbitant stuff with drugstore Arabian fare. 

This leads to members of Fragrantica deluding themselves into thinking that there are "batch variations" and significant reformulations of Armaf frags. Let me get this out of the way: there are neither. Every brand has batches, but 99% of them are merely quality control numbers, with no discernible difference in smell. Creed is an outlier in that they intentionally varied fragrance compositions from batch to batch, which led to perennial speculation on the supposed differences in character and quality from year to year, especially for the big sellers like Aventus and Millésime Impérial. 

As to the conjecture about reformulations, which isn't uncommon in this community, I would point out that most of the Club de Nuit range is new and still under the radar, where these frags will likely stay for many years to come, so I can't see any benefit in reformulating them. Before you shout at me, remember that we here in the fragrance community are not representative of the larger population, which has never heard of Armaf. We're also not in Dubai, where the mentality is to increase budgets, so if anything, Armaf would hopefully improve their offerings via reformulation. 

Fragrantica user "bandofthehawk999" wrote of Sillage:

"I own the original formula (Black atomizer 2020<) and the new formula (Silver Atomizer 2021<). In short get the older batches (Black atomizer) this one actually fits all the praise and good comments below. Actually smells like SMW. Avoid the new batches 2021 onwards, they are not it. 

This prompted a few members to follow up with offhand comments about which batch they were reviewing, based apparently on the color of the atomizer, as if this is some definitive marker of a formula change, instead of its just being that Armaf listened to the criticism, voiced by several reviewers on YouTube, that the black atomizer clashes with the silver bottle. Suddenly we should all seek out bottles with black atomizers, if we really want something that approximates Silver Mountain Water by Creed. 

This is clearly crazy. But there you have it. I happen to have a bottle with the silver sprayer, and maybe my nose is broken, but my side-by-side comparison of Sillage to SMW put Sillage on top. It smells 98% exactly like the Creed, with the only differences being more muted top notes, and what is clearly a much older version of SMW in the drydown, versus the current Creed formula, which is miles away from what SMW used to be. Sillage is richer, deeper, brighter. 

Another funny phenomenon is the high number of people who claim that Armafs need to "macerate" in their bottles, preferably with the caps off, after "wasting a few sprays" to let air in, and "sitting for a few months in the dark." Now, I happen to be one of the voices that championed this reality with Creeds several years ago. A fellow blogger and several members of Basenotes criticized me when I said that Creeds start out weak and get much stronger the longer they sit, especially after air is introduced to the bottle. My observation was derided as a nonsensical fiction, and I was perpetuating it because I didn't get how stupid it is for a company to release a product that self-improves. 

Of course I was right about it all along, and in the years since then, it has become standard practice for people to openly admit to letting their Creeds macerate in-bottle after initial use. Apparently the same is now true for Armaf perfumes. I've had firsthand experience with this with my bottle of Milestone. When I first tried it, it smelled good but very strong, very floral, and it resembled Chez Bond more than Millésime Impérial. After two years of sitting in my dark basement, the fragrance has relaxed, note separation has dramatically improved, and the heart and base smell nearly identical to MI. 

Some people can handle that, and others can't. Sillage seems to need maceration less than Milestone, at least to my nose, but maybe it will improve over time. Armaf is a brand that does things differently; instead of dumping their budget into top notes and letting the rest slide, they go half-hearted on their tops and whole-hog on their bases, which is where Sillage really shines. Something tells me Armaf will release a new Club de Nuit in the next year or so, and I'm excited to see which Creed they go after next. 

Just the fact that they go after Creed at all is enough to drive many people nuts. It's funny to read review after review that slams Club de Nuit (Whatever) for being "nothing like" whatever they're cloning. With most clones, this is true, but things are very different with the Club de Nuit line. These aren't your average clone perfumes, and they absolutely are eating Creed's lunch. The money is there for it, and they're spending it wisely. 

Honeysuckle Eau de Toilette (Caswell-Massey)

Honeysuckle, like lilac and lily of the valley, is impossible to distill, which means perfumers must "reconstruct" its headspace aroma using a variety of unrelated materials. The soundest formula for honeysuckle (from Poucher's) includes things like nerol (from neroli), jasmine absolute, heliotropin, and methyl anthranilate, all of which are assembled into the honey-sweet lilt of flowers in the genus Lonicera. 

Caswell-Massey has a formidable line of soliflore EDTs in its range, and I was drawn to their Honeysuckle scent, as the last time I smelled a truly great honeysuckle perfume was in 2011, Creed's Chevrefeuille Original, which has since been vaulted. Chevrefeuille smelled of musky white florals atop a lush base of dewey greens with a hint of fennel, but some reviewers complained that it wasn't anything like real honeysuckle. I figured I'd give Caswell-Massey's a try, and to be honest, it smells like they used Poucher's formula, at least as a starting point. My nose picks up distinct twinges of neroli and jasmine, along with green-grassy methyl naphthyl ketone (orange blossom), all of which are conjoined by various aldehydes and esters into something that approximates the vividly indolic sweetness of the real thing. Spring in a bottle. 

The scent continues in linear fashion for about five or six hours, although longevity isn't stellar. Soliflores are the a capella singing of perfumery, where the olfactory identity of a single flower is expected to shine without the support of backing notes. It's difficult to judge them, because their success or failure rests on the skill of the perfumer, and I tend to think any perfumer brave enough to tackle a soliflore deserves the benefit of the doubt. Caswell-Massey's Honeysuckle is very good, perhaps a bit too close to jasmine, but still quite languid, sweet, and natural from start to finish.