Reflection Man Amouage 2007

I ride my racing bike along the Rhine. In the middle of the old harbour road, wild herbs push their way through the porous asphalt. The embankment is also overgrown with plants that exude the scent of essential oils. All around there is hectic activity. The workers of the malt factory are loading an anchored ship. Grains roll down a gutter onto the loading area. It is dusty and smells malty sweet. The sun warms the Rhine, which evaporates contrasting fresh accents. This is where the elements come together: sweet and dusty air, fresh and cool water vapour, herbaceous and flowery earth and dry and warm sunrays. I grasp the scenario with all my senses and I feel infinitely free and happy.

Amouage "Reflection Man" corresponds to this scenario. The top note is briefly dominated by pink pepper in combination with green rosemary. This emphasises the herbaceous nature. But very quickly a contrast of white flowers is added. The interplay of the mild pepper with the light orange blossom creates the illusion of cool water vapour. The base, with its powdery sweetness, slowly works its way into the centre of the fragrance. But woodsy patchouli and woody vetiver once again embody a facet of nature. The circle is complete. All contrasts create an extremely harmonious arc of tension. The overall impression is very light, open and dry. One can hardly speak of firm scent chords here, as the individual scents are constantly rearranging themselves.

Mazzolari "Hartley" and Bond No. 9 "Chinatown" go into a similar fragrance direction, but do not reach the perfection of Amouage "Reflection Man", because they have a strong to obtrusive sillage and thus emphasize and structure different chords in the fragrance individually. The freedom that Refelction offers is in my opinion a masterpiece. That this is at the expense of the Sillage should not be surprising.

Another disadvantage, besides the weak radiation of the fragrance, is the habituation effect that creeps in with the pleasing harmony. If I wear Reflection two days in a row, I hardly notice it anymore. This is because there is absolutely no scent that disturbs me. Nothing stands out noticeably and thus the scent is probably very quickly classified by the brain as harmless or harmless and completely faded out. With Hartley and Chinatown a slightly pungent scent (not unpleasant, rather something - in a positive sense - demanding) and a "thicker" base counteract the habituation effect in a sensible way. That's why Amouage "Reflection Man" does not represent an everyday scent for me, but remains in its harmonic perfection an ideal for special moments; and for some critics maybe just (as an analogy) a dream from which they try to wake up:

"Have you ever looked at her closely, marveled at how flawless and beautiful she is? Billions of people just live on and have no idea. Did you know that the first Matrix was planned as a perfect world where no human being had to suffer? An all-round happy life! It was a disaster. People didn't accept the program. Some of us don't think we have the right programming language to create a perfect world for you. But I believe that the human species defines its reality through sorrow and suffering. So the perfect world was just a dream your primitive brain was trying to wake up from." (quote from Agent Smith, from the film Matrix)