I wasn’t really sure what to expect when I first sampled it, but reading reviews about its icy patchouli, I had to try it. At first sample, it had to be mine. I’ll try to keep this quick and simple.

Patchouli lovers – you need to try it. It’s not like head shop patchouli, but rather a smooth, crisp, woodsy patchouli. I can totally buy into their marketing; a man out on the town, dressed in great jeans, a dark cotton blazer, a white button down, and an air of confidence. It dries into this gorgeously sleek leather/musk/amber with just a gentle touch of citrus to give a tart, bright element. By the way, if you like this, you might like Montale Pure Gold. And if you like Pure Gold, you might like Chanel Coromandel. Nightscape smells nothing like Coromandel, but just saying… if you like one, etc.

Have some pics – great bottle, with a nice feel in the hand. The cap is a let down as it’s just molded plastic, but without a considerable price hike, there’s not much else they could do with it.

There you go! A gorgeous scent and a great bottle. Check it out – Nightscape by Ulrich Lang.

The bottles and packaging look gorgeous, though I haven’t actually seen one in person. I recently got the three of them as samples from luckyscent, and have been sampling them from time to time. Nomad is the one I’m sampling right now, and I really do like it. It opens a bit more “perfumey” than you’d expect, probably from a number of synthetic musks and florals. It settles into a creamy, sweetened heliotrope, with a sandalwood/vanilla undertone and the ever-present synthetic musk ringing along.

I could see myself owning and wearing this one though. It seems like a perfume scent that wouldn’t offend, but wouldn’t be boring or run of the mill either.

Douce Amere is a gorgeous scent. It combines the familiar sweet, hay-like base of Serge Lutens that is reminiscent of the drydown of Chergui with a crisp, icy anise opening. It has a slight boozy feel to it in the top notes that might remind you of a whiff of Chartreuse liquor. It settles into a comforting, velvety middle with signature SL cues. It’s a great addition to the line, and a pity that it’ll be infinitely harder to get (for those of us outside of Paris).

I guess a set of photos of one tan labeled Serge Lutens is not much different than the next, but Serge does have beautiful bottles, so I figured it couldn’t hurt. Here are just a few that I snapped – nothing fancy, but for those new to Serge, it’s a nice way of checking out the bottle!

Enough of that – on to the point. I got my gorgeous new bottle of Comme des Garcons LUXE Patchouli in this past week. Franco at luckyscent personally saw to my order and really did me good for samples on this order. I was thinking about getting it from beautyhabit (another great site!) because of their 10% off sale, but he promised to make up for the difference with samples. I really wanted the pyramid bottle rather than the cube, so that’s all I needed to hear to get it from luckyscent.

I’m still just as enamored by the gorgeous scent in the bottle (it’s sprayed on my arm right now and every time I catch a whiff, I’m more and more pleased with the purchase). I managed to get it at no cost out of pocket because I sold a couple Creeds to pay for it. Creed employs some really bizarre strong-armed tactics and legal threats to maintain their questionable history story and a recent example hit close to home and made me decide to no longer patronize that company. I sold the ones I could live without and kept a couple that I or the fiance really love (hey, morals only go but so far ).

PHOTOS!

I need to set up some new sets and such for photos like Nathan Branch does (incredible photos!), but until then, I hope you enjoy the same ol’ black on plexiglass look. Oh, and for those who wonder, it’s a 2 prong to 3 prong plug converter that’s holding the box up in the first photo – it was handy.

I finally caved. It was going to happen sooner or later. I ordered a Nikon D90 this week and it will arrive on Friday. I won’t have a good macro initially for close bottle shots, but hopefully soon (I’m selling loads of old film equipment right now… and my broken old dSLR sold for $125!). I switched to Nikon for a number of reasons, but from what I can tell, the D90 is the best in its class, even considering that it was released in August of 2008. My previous camera was a Minolta Maxxum 7D, so with the fold of that company, Sony took over and continued development of the camera division. I could have just as easily bought an Alpha A-550, but the picture quality just wasn’t up to the D90, not to mention the fact that it’s missing some serious functions like Depth of Field Preview and Program Shift. Once I sell all of my Maxxum/Alpha mounts (it’s sad to part ways with the Maxxum 7 film body, but what can ya do…), I’ll get a shiny new macro and get back to taking some fragrance porn.

That needs to happen soon though, since that pretty bottle of CdG Patchouli is arriving today. Once all of my camera shuffling over the past year is complete, I’ll be perfectly happy with a Hasselblad for medium format, D90 for digital, and an old Canon A-1 for 35mm. Now that’s some efficient camera exchanging (6 cameras to 3).

Pure Oud by By Kilian. It’s expensive. The bottle’s gorgeous. I have no idea the cost of the actual formula. I want it.
It’s fabulous – it is the most natural, smoothest oud centric scent I’ve tried. I don’t know if that means it is any more or less authentic than other oud scents, but I do know that it’s wonderful. It has magnificent staying power as well. Just a few swipes on my hand and 7 hours later, it’s still going strong. It’s a silky smooth oud trip with touches of scratchy spice here and there to help out. I doubt I’ll buy it in its standard packaging, but the much better $/ml of the 100ml refill is much more appealing. Check out Pure Oud at Luckyscent.

L’Artisan Parfumeur Passage d’Enfer. Passage from Hell. It’s one of my top 5 or 6 Artisans. It’s loaded with a light, shimmering white incense and a great, dry frankincense, all smoothed with just a bit a clean musk. Does it have a slight touch of what seems like bug spray? Sure. It might. That part is not totally unlike the same experience you’ll get with Kyoto by Comme des Garcons. It’s a good bit “lighter” and vastly easier to wear though. When the GF wears it, it’s so unique on her that I sometimes don’t even recognize it and have to ask what she’s wearing. I’d recommend trying this one, but it needs to be sprayed fully rather than just dabbed to get the whole experience. This is also one of the few incense based scents that’s great in all temperatures (and also great to people new to incense scents).

Oh, and I buckled. I ordered the great pyramid Comme des Garcons LUXE Patchouli bottle from Luckyscent. I really need to buy a new digital camera so I can start putting more pics on here (and the GF’s cybershot doesn’t quite cut it ).

When I first got my little sample of Comme des Garcons LUXE patchouli in the mail from Luckyscent, I dabbed a bit on my hand eagerly awaiting a velvety smooth patchouli scent that warranted the $290 price tag. What I got, I didn’t understand. At that point, I don’t think I had smelled many scents with large amounts of fenugreek, immortelle, or the like. It’s such a hard scent to describe. It’s almost like a foody take on what old paperback books would smell like with some vanilla extract smeared onto them. The gourmand quality is really played up in Dior’s Eau Noire (I think the immortelle centric scent that made me an addict).

Fast forward about a year. I was looking through the drawer this morning for something to dab onto the back of my hand to enjoy while I sat at my desk all day. I grabbed the Patchouli and thought to myself, the last time I gave something a while and tried it again, I really enjoyed it. This time, I loved what I got. I smelled just what I had hoped – I rich, earthy fenugreek laced with white pepper and patchouli. It has an ever-present earthy note that is probably from the various wood notes in it (oak, cedar, sandalwood). I’m really looking forward to giving it a full wear rather than sampling on my hand. It very well may earn a spot in my wardrobe. I think I’ll be selling most, if not all, of my Creeds soon due to personal objections to certain strong-arm business tactics they employ, so those proceeds may be suited perfectly for helping a curiously expensive bottle of patchouli into my collection.

I recently picked up a 4ml decant of this stuff after reading on basenotes about how it works really well as a unisex/masculine and that the rose note really shined. I knew the GF would enjoy it even if it wasn’t right for me. I was pretty surprised with it after sampling. It’s not the big, spicy, innovative rose that I was hoping for. It is incredibly well made, of course, and blended very nicely with a great evolution, but I didn’t feel like it was anything spectacular or new. What I got was a fruity chypre with a very natural rose playing lead. It had all day longevity, but for my personal taste, it did lean a bit feminine with the use of the florals and sweet notes.

Parfum d’Empire Osmanthus Interdit

I have this on my hand right now – it strikes me as a very natural osmanthus with what seems almost like powdery bits of iris in the background and a crisp, natural feel to it. I have a wonderful osmanthus bush planted right by my back door, so when it’s in blossom, you’re greeted with the fabulous smell of osmanthus when you walk out the door.  This is not unlike that – it’s slightly less sweet as the bush that I have, but it’s that dryer feel to it that makes it stand out from osmanthus soliflores.

The bottle is gorgeous, though the outer packaging is a bit hokey. While I really do like the newer bottles and great boxes, I feel like using plastic caps (on most… Silver is metal) and regular glass bottles seem to have a hard time justifying their packaging premiums. On this one, they also lost the azure blue color of the juice for a light golden in the new packaging, only keeping the blue in the small plastic gem in the cap (the juice looks greener in these photos than it is… sad little camera). Also, the sprayer on these older bottles is unmatched… it’s a full, luxurious spray that is really quite satisfying. Imagine a KSSSHHHT versus a PFFT. Make sense? Thought so.

Apologies for the less than optimal photos – both, BOTH of my digital cameras broke within two weeks of each other. I haven’t had a chance to get a new one yet and have all the strobes taken down, so the Sony point-and-shoot had to step in snapshot style.

Today’s “scent on the back of the hand” is Aramis Havana Reserva. I had sort of expected it to be a traditional fougere, but what I got was anything but that. I wasn’t completely surprised by what came out, but it held far more interest in it than I’d expected.

It opens with a fizzy bright boozy notes, with a tickle of pepper and warmth of crushed tobacco. It settles relatively quickly into an intriguing rum/tobacco/pepper melody with soft cumin undertones and hints of patchouli. There are elements of a traditional after shave (think Old Spice type), but it’s done in a very well blended, nicely presented package. The long dry down brings great dry woody notes that really balance the whole composition. I likes it. I likes it a lot.

From what I gather, the Reserva is the same formulation as the old Havana, but in a higher concentration. I believe both of the Havana and Havana Reserva have been discontinued, but Aramis has re-released Havana with new packaging just last year. I think Reserva might be something I would only reach for on seldom occasion, so paying the exorbitant prices that are out there for the discontinued Reserva isn’t really in the cards. However, I can really see wearing it to an evening outdoor happy hour on the beach could be perfect. I’ll try out the new Havana release and see how that compares – hopefully it will make the cut and make the much friendlier price of $48 even friendlier.