Monday Quick Sniffs, part 37

Here I go again with some brief impressions of perfume I tried lately.

Freshly launched by Maison Francis Kurkdjian this february is Aqua Celestia. I have to admit I had very high expectations for it. Not just because I loved Grand Soir but also because the description for this novelty sounds very appealing. It’s a very pretty composition but it’s oh so light that I can’t justify its high cost. Aqua Celestia doesn’t smell of anything on my skin for the first 5 minutes. Then it finally starts to effuse a juicy lime aroma with some green elements to it. Shortly after a refreshing, cold mint accord enters the stage. It gives an aromatic vibe to it. Then there is a beautiful mimosa. It’s yellow, powdery, with a floral-watery aroma. It nicely combines with the fragrance of black currant. The latter one brings a fruity and tart feeling, still a little bit cold. It highly reminds me of spring, of thawing ice and first plants waking up after the winter. In the base I could still smell mimosa, although it was very pale. There were also remaining elements of black currant plus a soft, fluffy musk. New MFK is a great perfume, it really is! But on my skin it’s completely gone within 1 hour. I understand that it’s only EdT concentration but if something retails at a premium quality price, I expect it to last at least 6 hours. I won’t accept a short-lived perfume. Unless it’s a refreshing cologne that is meant to fade away quickly.

Le Galion introduced Sang Bleu in September 2016. This ultra-masculine fragrance opens with a generous dose of wormwood that provides an aromatic intro of the composition. As it develops, you could smell a blend of zesty bergamot and juicy orange, followed by a bouquet of indolic jasmine. After a while true masculinity of this perfume rises. You could smell a lot of patchouli, spiced up with pink pepper. In addition there is galbanum that provides green scent. Then there is cold eucalyptus, put together with a lot of rosemary. The latter one gives an herbal impression that also veers dangerously towards sweaty, dirty smell. Tarragon smells a bit like hay in this Le Galion fragrance and it also has a sweaty aspect. Cedar is rugged, rough in this blend. It combines with patchouli for a duet that smells very earthly, muddy, dirty. Clary sage as well as other woody, spicy bits only enhance the feeling of dominating masculinity of Sang Bleu. This perfume is full of testosterone & women probably wouldn’t be happy wearing it themselves. But maybe they would be tempted by a man wearing it?

Close Up is a tenth fragrance from Olfactive Studio, a brand that couples perfume with photography to capture the mood of the place that has been photographed. This new member in the brand’s family starts with a heavy dose of tonka bean that gives an impression of something incredibly creamy, woody and warm spicy at the same time. It smells foody, like a pudding, but made of tonka and woody “granola”. Then a little bit of cherry joins the composition but I don’t get it as fruity at all. It’s there, I can smell it but it suits more to tell that it’s gourmand. Candied cherry is followed by coffee. Normally this note bothers me a lot though in Close Up it’s very soft, as if it was a latte with a lots of milk. This perfume also has a rich tenderness of tobacco and the bright facets of amber, placed on an earthy base of patchouli and musk. There is also a bit of rose. It’s quite a funny perfume, somewhat weird too but the combination smells surprisingly nice. I wouldn’t say that tonka, cherry, tobacco go well together. Here they do.