Paco Rabanne La Nuit: fragrance review

 Naked Lady Godiva, Countess of Mercia, rides on her proud gray horse, with leather bridles and wet saddle, keeping her word as a personal wager against her husband, on the occasion of relief from her husband's excessive taxation to the residents of the county. A peeping Tom peeps despite the curfew of the residents. 

This is the image that gradually appears and disappears in my mind - and maybe Rabanne's own, as he was immersed in spirituality for the latter part of his life- as I smell this wonderful creation by Jean Guichard for Paco Rabanne, La Nuit de Paco Rabanne. 

 John Collier's famous painting of Lady Godiva

 

The glamorous image of the TV spots with the woman in an evening lamé dress and flowing long hair, coiffed in 80s style with lots of volume tell only half the tale... 

 

This bold leathery chypre is proud and daring. The green whiplash of artemisia is precious as it segues into honeyed notes, rich and lush. It's easy to get back because it's so horsey at this stage. The alliance of oakmoss with civet and leather in Rabanne's La Nuit raises it into the pantheon of cult classics, though and it remains an unparalleled gem in the collection by the great designer. It's a shame that this gem was discontinued so soon, yet it will always remind me of the great designer of the Space Age, of the 1960s and 1970s. It is at once so much in style with his boldness and at clash points with his overt futurism. 

La Nuit Paco Rabanne... Partout où est la nuit (Everywhere where it is nighttime).

Fragrance Tendencies for 2022: The Perfume Shrine Forecast

 The new year opens before us with the world of perfumes reflecting everything that concerns us in the rest of pop culture. From the world of woke to environmental consciousness and artificial intelligence, 2022 is set to be an exciting year. Let's go examine these tendencies in fragrance for 2022 one by one.

 

Reclaiming the Name of the Rose

Perfumes with rose work slightly like the classic trench coat in beige gabardine in our closet, or a brit pop song in a department store with youthful products. They brighten the mood with their easy reception even by novices, their purity of intentions, their classicism in structure. This year, creators and companies, mainstream and niche, are reinventing the rose.

 Tom Ford leads with 3 suggestions that follow last year's Rose Prick, this time with geographical inspiration: Rose D'Amalfi, Rose de Chine, and Rose de Russie are released in February 2022, before Valentine, as part of the new Tom Ford Private Rose Garden collection. Red and rose and for Armani with the new Sì Passione l'Εclat de Parfum, with the bright Cate Blanchet as the muse of the campaign again. As with Lancôme with La Nuit Trésor Intense L’Eau de Parfum (what a mouthful, have your smartphone at the ready to show to sales assistants).

 Digital Anamorphs

When marketing perfume, we often tend to resort to ancient techniques - things that are collected and processed by hand. In the actual industry, however, this is definitely not the case. Fragrances by large and small houses incorporate sophisticated ingredients of human laboratory preparation and advanced industrial sophistication technologies. Headspace was one, a popular technique first used in Antonia's Flowers, that captures the smell of things, and then recreates them in the lab as innovative arrangements. 

Nowadays technologies such as artificial intelligence are used to compose perfumes. In 2021 there was even an all-digital fragrance created as a non-exchangeable work (NFT)! The launch of Paco Rabanne Phantom in late 2021,  with its cute robot-shaped bottle, let consumers use their smartphone to tap on its head to create a digital experience.  

The composition of Paco Rabanne Phantom on the other hand is entirely created by artificial intelligence (AI) and this is going to be used more and more in industrial size perfumery. Digital interactive bottles and perfumes created entirely from artificial intelligence will continue to pierce our minds and noses. In 2022 and beyond. 

 

More art + perfume go hand in hand 

 

Arpa (sounds like harpe in Greek…) is a new multi-platform brand by perfumer Barnabé Fillion. It combines aroma, music, architecture and images in a complete experience of all the senses. Coupling that is becoming an increasingly strong trend. In November 2021, Arpa was officially released at the Dover Street Parfums Market and the final collection did not disappoint our high expectations. 

 

At Arpa, Fillion reunites with many of its former partners, drawing on different talents to create accompanying pieces for the brand's perfumes. These include a series of sculptures and records that are combined with scents, such as Anicka Yi and the French DJ Pilooski. The graphics were designed by the heavyweight Nathalie du Pasquier of the Memphis Group, while an office space was designed by the architect of the Australian firm Aesop, Jean-Philippe Bonnefoi. Meanwhile, limited edition bottles have been hand-crafted by glassmaker Jochen Holz.

 

 

Chinese Tips for Chanel

As part of its approach to China's always-aimed-at market, this dormant luxury consumer giant, Chanel with a distinctive eco-friendly approach creates recyclable, bio-sustainable products in a new line of cosmetics, makeup and grooming products called Chanel No.1

 

The collection with the camellia logo bears the symbol of the flower in red, just in anticipation of the Chinese New Year (the so-called Lunar Year) and with the expected lightness in the fragrances. For Chanel No.1 L'Eau Rouge, perfumer Olivier Polge explained: "This aromatic spray with a composition of 97% natural ingredients, can be used in combination with another product of the house or alone". 

The composition ends with a drying down of iris and clean musks for a slightly powdery feeling of cleanliness.

 

  Hot air? Not exactly.

 This is not the first time that pure air has been packaged in bottles for consumers with a sense of humor. The Air de Montcuq was a first attempt: Montcuq is a French village, but the headphones bring a bit of "air from our butt" - the smell happily reminiscent of ethereal mountain scenery and freshness.

 Air Eau de Parfum by The Air Company is a sexless fragrance composed of carbon dioxide, which binds at its source. To do this, the brand produces hydrogen which is fed to the patented carbon conversion reactor along with CO2. The resulting reaction converts hydrogen and CO2 into ethanol, methanol and impurity-free water, which form the body of the perfume. Then, the Air Eau de Parfum preparation ends with light aromatic notes, such as orange peel, jasmine, violet and tobacco - so as not to deviate from the aromatic parameter.

 

 

Eco-consciousness will flourish 

Starting with Rochas and their Rochas Girl, lots of companies, not only Chanel above, put an emphasis on eco-consciousness, sustainability and green imprint. 

Fashion brand Chloé has even issued a sort of manifesto on their website. "We intend to become a force for positive change beyond the Chloé workplace by working with our main suppliers to promote and further our standards while ensuring transparency. Based on our environmental impact research, we learned that our biggest impact comes from raw materials. This has prompted us to work with external experts to identify lower impact materials. We are focused on increasing their proportion such that we can reach 90% by 2025 at the latest. Consequently, this will contribute to our target of reducing emissions by 25% per product."

This is reflected in both their Chloé Eau de Parfum Naturelle and their newest, just launched Nomade Eau de Parfum Naturelle, fronted by Naomi Scott.  

We will continue to see this trend gaining momentum throughout 2022 and beyond.  

 

Paco Rabanne Pour Homme: fragrance review

Paco Rabanne has been the green giant looming on the bath sill of many a bathroom in my country of origin in the 1970s and 1980s. This classic fougère has marked a generation, alongside best-sellers Drakkar Noir and Aramis, not to forget Azzaro pour Home; with a scent that has come to characterize maleness. In the case of Paco Rabanne pour Homme the underlying brutishness is there, but the sophisticated veneer and the hint of sweetness makes it friendlier than any of the others.

Like any classic fougère the abstractness of Paco Rabanne pour Homme tries to replicate a feeling, an impression, rather than an actual smell. The fern from which the fragrance family takes the name (in homage to the 19th century Fougère Royale fragrance by Houbigant discussed above) is more like the green tentacles of soapy leatheriness of the barbershop than anything anyone would actually meet in a forest. Ferns don't smell much after all. The fougère is a man-made smell rather than an approximation of the natural.

The soapy overlay of Paco Rabanne pour Homme makes it exceptionally attuned to that prerequisite of any masculine fragrance that aims for wide appeal: a sense of cleanliness, though not entirely ersatz thanks to the familiar recollection of lavender essence; but at the same time a man-made product for sure. It's an entirely inedible smell, alternatively cool and warm, gaining warmth in the drydown thanks to an ambery note, always forceful despite the hint of honeyed softness, the hallmark of any good representative in the fougère genre. Some things are not to be trifled with.

The newer version alas does not live up to the old one, but it's still something that needs to be visited in order to appreciate how steadfast a classic fougère can be. It's how fathers should smell like, a scent of dependency and safety.

Paco Rabanne One Million: fragrance review

It's hard to fault a fragrance for being popular. After all millions of people buying it can't all be wrong, right? Mostly right.

Paco Rabanne hit the proverbial jackpot with their aptly named 1 Million for Men, a woody spicy scent that combines cinnamon and leathery amber notes in such a ratio as to come across as at once becoming and engulfing. Indeed step into any bar or club or even use the underground and you're certain to come across unmistakably wearing it and making their presence very well known indeed.

via

The projection (sillage in French, pronounced see-YAJ) of the sweetish, cozy fragrance is quite formidable, as you catch whiffs of it as said guy takes off their jacket or brushes a stray curl off their forehead across the table. You probably need to test the lasting power by the traces left on your sheets the next day and -boy, I can tell you- it lasts!! Oh how it lasts. You will never be able to wash it off completely; that's bittersweet in itself, isn't it?

Therefore if your bet is on sureness rather than individualism look no further than 1 Million. It's a million times trustworthy for tenacity and catching feminine attention.

Paco Rabanne La Nuit: fragrance review

Smell La Nuit by Spanish-born designer Paco Rabanne and nostalgise about the 1980s with a vengeance. In that carnal decade, La Nuit was aimed at "the sensual, sophisticated and modern woman" "partout où est la nuit" (everywhere where it's night-time) and was quite abruptly discontinued in the following decade. Paco Rabanne fragrances from the 1969 cool Calandre to the 1988 men's aromatic Ténéré and the excellent 1979 Métal suffer from market maladjustment despite their pitch-perfect tune-in with their times; they fly under the radar for no good reason and get discontinued all too unjustly. La Nuit (1985) is a similar case in point.

Poised between a leathery chypre with fruity accents and a deep oriental (with no great sweetness), Paco Rabanne's La Nuit, composed by perfumer Jean Guichard, is vaguely reminiscent of the danger and swagger of vintage Narcisse Noir by Caron: c'est troublant! It also has elements of the sharp scimitar weilded by Cabochard and the urinous honeyed leather of Jules by Dior. 
Once upon a time a certain biophysicist with a keen interest in perfumes had given away the perfume's core character by (positively) claiming that it smells "as if you sprayed Tabu on a horse", thus delineating the two main directions the composition goes for: civet (of which Tabu has oodles) and leather. This of course goes contrary to prior writings in French where he compared the upkeep of interest in smelling the dissonant top notes with musicians tuning up their string instruments before a concert. His apology and excuse?

 "My extenuating circumstance was that at the time (1985) I lived in Nice, where women can be toe-curlingly vulgar, and it was a big hit. [...] Now that the Niçoises have moved on, I see it for what it was all along: the sexiest fragrance since Cabochard”.

The construction of Paco Rabanne's La Nuit lies in the precarious juxtaposition of unassuming, fresh ingredients over "animalic" notes (those smells which recall real animals or rather our libidinous animal urges, as delineated by the discourse between Jung and Freud). The top of La Nuit is profuse in linalool, rather aromatic with a hint of spiciness like basil and myrtle, and a "bruised" citrusy note that results from the aging process in the vintage bottle. In the evolving process, golden hued plum and peach skin (the note made famous by undecalactone in Guerlain's Mitsouko) lend an old-school, rich saturation; compared to the graphic shrill effects that many contemporary fragrances go for in their search for "freshness", 1980s fragrance seem akin to canvases painted by the Great Masters. Of course this tells us more about the state of perfumery now than about La Nuit.
What transpires through this deep, pungent fragrance is an animalic, sweaty mantle (made slightly austere by a woody note of cedar) that engulfs a honeyed rose heart, the latter perhaps reminiscent of L'Arte de Gucci; the rose isn't what it's about nevertheless, but serves as a feminine counterpoint to the more unisex animal notes: Not only a huge dose of civet, but also the whole kit-and-caboodle of retro musks, intimate-smelling beeswax and bittersweet leather, almost urinous notes. The effect is a rich, individual leathery fragrance which can be quite alluring on the right type of defiant woman (or a discerning man); personally I can easily imagine it on Violetta Sanchez.

Extremely tenacious for an eau de toilette and even an eau de parfum (the latter slightly better nuanced) and very discernible sillage make this a vintage fragrance to use sparingly, especially if you "don't want to offend". (Then again, what are you doing playing with La Nuit?). The parfum (procured via a valued friend collector) is frankly exquisite.
I don't find it as debauched or decadent a scent as other hunters of the vintage scented gems (the term affectionately used is "skanky"), but rather edgy and quite French in its "je m'en foutisme" that French perfume wearers always had about their personal choice.
No wonder it's discontinued...

Notes for Paco Rabanne La Nuit:
Top Notes: Bergamot, Lemon, Tangerine, Myrtle, Cardamom, Artemesia (Armoise)
Heart Notes: Jasmine, Rose, Pepper, Peach
Base Notes: Cedarwood, Leather, Patchouli, Oakmoss, Animalic note, Civet

Related reading on Perfume Shrine: The Leather Series (leather scents directory with history info &fragrance reviews)

Photo of Arielle, Monte Carlo 1982, by Helmut Newton

Paco Rabanne Lady Million: Bottle like a Diamond

The new feminine fragrance by Paco Rabanne, Lady Million, is packaged in an impressive diamond shaped bottle with the spray mechanism incorporated in the design. Looks stunning as far as Im concerned. I don't know how the fragrance will smell (like a million bucks, they'd want us to believe obviously), but if you missed the news about the latest launch, you can read it all in this article.

Paco Rabanne Lady Million: new fragrance

Puig, the Spanish company behind the Paco Rabanne fragrances portfolio, is launching a new fragrance, rumoured to be the feminine equivalent of the commercially successful masculine One Million, mistakenly reported as Swinging Paris (the mistake according to official info from Puig headquarters was due to a press release that mentioned the words, but in another context). The name will be presented in the press on May 25th, when the official launch will happen. Edit to add: The name is officially confirmed as Lady Million.
Fronted by Dree Hemingway, Mariel's daughter (who is in turn Ernest's grand-daughter), it will be aimed at the hip generation embracing modern aesthetics and fashion consciousness. You see, Dree is model du jour in the runway world (having participated in such prestigious shows as Valentino, Jean Paul Gaultier and Gianfranco Ferré) and hasn't been "burned" by overexposure just yet.

Paco Rabanne intends to present their latest feminine fragrance Lady Million, as the female alter ego to their recent masculine release, One Million. The scent was supposed to be available in July 2010 according to one source ~while Puig swears the launch will be in May (see above)~ and they continue: “Humour, gluttony and seduction,” will be characterised in the campaign, which will highlight the allure of the blonde ‘rocker.’ For the label Paco Rabanne, “the audacious Dree Hemingway personifies the glamour of today’s ‘femme fetale.’” No words on "notes" yet, but we will supplement as soon as available (something tells me we're faced with a fruitchouli?) Edit to add: It's a fresh woody floral with notes of citron, raspberry, neroli, orange flower, jasmine, gardenia, patchouli and honey and is composed by Anne Flipo, Dominique Ropion and Beatrice Piquet.
On a related note: Is the girl a little too thin for comfort or is it just cranky ol' me talking? Anyway...

Paco Rabanne is nowadays more fondly remembered for their classics (the lovely, easy-going Calandre and the cool Métal from the 70s as well as the animalistic La Nuit from 1985) rather than their modern offerings (Ultraviolet, XS, XS Black etc). So a major feminine release is in many ways a bet for the brand. Let's see what happens!

pics via models.com & fashionindie.com

Paco Rabanne Calandre: Fragrance Review

"Imagine its spring. A rich young man arrives in his E-type Jaguar to pick up his girlfriend. Imagine the scent of fast air, speed and leather seats. He takes the girl for a ride along the seaside. He stops in a forest. There he makes love to her on the bonnet of the car."
~Marcel Carles recalling Paco Rabanne's brief for what became Calandre.

I was browsing one of the blogs I enjoy, namely Perfume Posse, the other day, when I came up upon a post by Patty in which amidst other musings (such as her antipathy for my beloved Fille en Aiguilles, how can this be I ask you?), she was crestfallen about the discontinuation of Calandre, a floral aldehydic that comes from 1969 (composed by perfumer Michel Hy) and which is just about one of the friendliest rose aldehydics in existence.

This Rabanne is also respendid with interesting trivia: It has rose oxides which give a slight "metallic" tinge to the flower, supposedly to translate the notion of "calandre" into scent, it being the car's radiator grille in French. Actually the first perfume "draft" was too reminiscent of a hot car (Spanish-born Paco Rabanne's brief) which made it rather unwearable, so back to the sketch board it went! The bottle, designed by Pierre Dinand, was sparse, with metal overlays in brushed silver finish which gave a high-tech look about 20 years before this would become the norm.

Calandre has been special to me personally for two reasons: First, it was given to me as a gift as a young teenager (we're talking about 13 here) by my sophisticated grandmother. I cherished my little bottle and had it alongside my other precious gems for years ~Anais Anais, Chanel No.5 (you read this correctly), Tosca and 4711 by Muelhens and Opium (you read this correctly too, I've said my piece before) alongside several minis I snatched up every chance I got.
Secondly, in the face of the deterioration of Rive Gauche by the oversexed, modernisating Tom Ford stint as creativer director of Yves Saint Laurent Parfums, Calandre remained more faithful to the former's idea of what I call its spirit of frosty allure, "what KGB agents would have worn to seduce James Bond"; almost the way "black pudding" is the faithful reminder of our primeval, barbaric and needy of ready nutrients nature.
The comparison between Rive Gauche and Calandre of course is the very antithesis of cognitive dissonance: Perfume lore wants Jacques Polge to have been instructed by the people at Yves Saint Laurent to produce something similar to the ~at the time~ avant-garde Calandre which had been issued the previous year. The result came in the market in 1971 in a striking blue and silver metal aluminum can and with the passage of years managed to eclipse the pulchritude of the original: Yves Saint Laurent with his flamboyant colours, rustic decadence and matchless tailoring became all the rage in the 1970s, while the futuristic Rabanne sewing with pliers and a blowtorch on his space-age plastic chain-mail Barbarellas had become a little less relevant to the zeitgeist; only Mylene Farmer continues to evoke the futuristic extravagances today. Overall Calandre is more American than Rive Gauche and it pre-emptied the trend of American-style fragrances that followed (White Linen etc)

Calandre has a wonderful olfactory profile: citrusy, slightly sour top note which segues into both oily green hyacinth and a fresh (laundered, thanks to lily-of-the-valley) white rose, elements which peter out slowly into an undefinable vaguely herbal base with honey and light musk touches that is its own thing more than anything that morphs into the wearer. Compared to Rive Gauche, Calandre is less frosty aldehydic, more lemony and with a softer overall character but equally abstract like you can't really point your finger on what you're smelling: Is it iced linens off the fridge on a hot day in a tamer version of The Seven Year Itch heat-remedy? A florist's fridge when the flowers have long departed? Or the cool breeze through a vetiver-sewn canopy in a non-tropical climate? That's Calandre's charm!
Cue into the last few days: The news of a possible discontinuation of Calandre bombed. Smiles were wiped off faces. The official response from Paco Rabanne on the question on discontinuation luckily came through a POL member, Cubby:

"Thank you for your message and for your interest in Paco Rabanne. Further to your enquiry, the Calandre perfume is still available in our current collection. Could you please notify us of your residential area so that we could indicate you the details of your nearest stockist. We remain
at your disposal for any further information. Best regards,
Paco Rabanne Online"

So now you can rest easy! It's even available as an Eau de Toilette on Amazon still.

Notes for Paco Rabanne Calandre:
Top: Aldehydes, green notes, bergamot, lemon
Heart: Rose, lily of the valley, geranium, jasmine, ylang-ylang, orris root
Base: Vetiver, oakmoss, cedar, sandalwood, amber, musk

Related reading on Perfume Shrine: Aldehydes, what are they and how do they smell?

Perfume ads via parfum De Pub. Pic of chainmail dress by Paco Rabanne via In Memory of All Things

Optical scentsibilities: the Art of Composition

One of the first things that one learns at Art School is the mastery which is required in placing your subject in a composition that focuses on what you want to focus on and hinting at subtle references. The art of composition is not easy, alas. This is often the downfall of many advertising campaigns which opt for a too "loaded" approach or one that misses the target and diverts the eye from the focal point.
And then some others do brilliantly exactly thanks to their arresting placement of elements on paper. Like this advertisement for Paco Rabanne cologne for men from the late 70s. In a very clever composition it puts all the emphasis, through the use of light and shadow, on the central subject: the man in the background. The fact that he is a glamour photographer is hinted at by the equipment seen in shadow on the foreground and the two are joined by the ray of light escaping from the room that is seen at the back, while the man is apparently talking on the phone, casually -as hinted by his hand in his pocket- disheveled; perhaps arranging a tryst with a loved one. The message is smartly displayed: Paco Rabanne for Men is meant for men who don't have to prove anything and it challenges vision to be used in alternative ways: maybe through the aiding lens of olfaction, for a change.



The composition merits its own lineage being revealed. It is none other, in my opinion, than this classic of classics: Las Meninas by Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez from 1656. Las Meninas means "maids of honour" in Spanish. The painting is a depiction of the royal family of Phillip IV of Spain and its entourage, in which the Infanta Margarita (the royal child-daughter) is posing at the center with her maids, her chaperone and two dwarfs. But in reality it is more a depiction of the shadowy silhouette standing at the doorway, seen through the lit "window" at the background that draws the eye upwards and through the painting. Again the trail of light travels from the back to the foreground, creating the tie that binds the composition into a whole. In the words of Silvio Gaggi, the painting is presented as "a simple box that could be divided into a perspective grid with a single vanishing point".
The iconic status of the painting is evident even more if we consider that Pablo Picasso as well as Salvator Dali interpreted the composition in studies of their own. Here is one of them by Picasso from 1957.
If one is interested in a more analytical approach of the painting, I would advise turning to Michel Foucault's Les mots et les choses ("The order of things", New York, Random House 1970), in which he devotes the opening chapter to this.

A innovative approach that has had an unforeseen lineage in perfume advertising.




Pic of Paco Rabanne courtesy of parfumdepub.
Las Meninas courtesy of allposters.com

You're the touch of wind, that surprises my body

For reasons of symmetry with my previous post, and antithesis as well (taking into account the above song talks about a never-ending internal winter that the singer cannot put up with anymore), I have decided to present you a list of male perfumes that could be used throughout winter; so as to "be a touch of wind, that surprises the body".

The song above can be listened to by clicking on the window. (courtesy of mpanikos on Youtube). It is sung by Greek songwriter Alkinoons Ioannidis from a record composed by Nikos Zoudiaris and is called "I cannot". The title of today's post is actually a line from the lyrics.

The whole text follows, translated by me:

If you could only slip in the darkness,
if you could only fly like an elf;
Tonight I will surely die,
I will die if I can't see you.

Aided with sweet wine I will become
an argonaut and come and find you.
To just meet you for a while
in my soul's seabed.

No, I cannot. Winter is hurting me.
Any more I cannot...
My yard is burned by snow, any more I cannot.

You're the touch of wind
that suprises my body
I have never satiated myself of you,
it was all but a moment.

XS Black by Paco Rabanne
Don't think of it as Extra Small, think of it phonetically: Ex-Cess. Excess of loveliness, of novelty points, of prettiness in a new release antithetical to the blandness of recent offering for men. Young and sweet, redolent of strawberries, pralines and patchouli with an unidentified floral note in there. Official notes: calabrian lemon, kalamazni, praline, cinnamon, balsam, black cardamon, palissander wood, black amber and patchouli. To me it's the illegitemate child of Innocent by Mugler and L'artisan's Voleur de Roses who has inherited very becoming genes.
If one is as cute as the boy advertising it, it doesn't hurt either.

London men by Burberry
The best tobacco and mulled wine-spice combo I have smelled from the recent batch. I have already said my piece . Go read it and then hurry and go test it!

Habit Rouge by Guerlain
Named after the red riding jacket of men for going hunting on horses in the english countryside this is class and comfort in a bottle. For men timid enough to go for the iconic oriental Shalimar and women who want a little less vanilla on their body.
First launched in 1965, composed by perfumer Jean-Paul Guerlain, the fragrance has attained classic status. It opens with citrus, then meanders along a slightly spicy path to some cinnamon paired with patchouli, finally leaving a leathery, vanillic impression. Powdery like opoponax and soft like a caress. Take care as the eau de parfum now circulating does not share the same formula as the classic Eau de cologne.

Arabie by Serge Lutens
Do you hide a man from the souk in your heart? All khol-ed eyes and heavy languorous lips? (This last bit brings to mind another great Alkinoos song which I will post when I fully review this one). One of the few fruity scents I like. Dried, candied fruits like dates in a gold liquid and the magic of benzoin bring exotic and intense pulsations to your mind. It smells coppery...

Obsession for men by Calvin Klein
The scent of choice for a rich, intense, dark, full-bodied amber with a touch of sweetness. It is single-minded and has one single effect. Makes one want to jumb your bones. Even felines seem to be attracted to it, per one zoo study (!) I won't elaborate. Needs to be sold with a NC-17 warning label on the box.

Antaeus by Chanel
This is pure man's clean sweat and animalistic labdanum. Created in 1981, still sexy after all those years. Complex and passionate like the mythological hero that inspired it. For when you want to make an impact!

Vetiver Extraordinaire by Frederic Malle
After all the sweet recommendations, a dry one for the grand finale. Vetivers are usually left aside for warmer weather as they have the quality of giving a grassy, earthy, cooling feeling that is so welcome in summer. This has the best qualities of the erathy aroma, not coupled with citrus as usually happens and lasts well and it struck me that it could be worn on a very bright, cold, snowy day, when the whole world is glistening with the pureness. The resinous base hints at you that pleasures of the home await after snowfighting.