Top Notes 
Citrus notes
Bergamot
Heart Notes 
Tonka bean
Base Notes 
Sandalwood
Amber
10/19/2015
ColinM
516 Reviews
ColinM
2
Almost...
A joke for its retail price assuming it’s still in production (or however, for the price it had when it was available), but overall nice if you manage to get it for some substantial fraction of the cost. Santal Imperial opens – and more or less, so remains – with a distinguished whiff of citrus and bergamot blended with a sort of warm and creamy texture arising from a dusty, sultry base of ambergris and tobacco with some tame sort of mossy musk, and a really smooth and bright woody accord which I guess may contain some synthetic sandalwood too –I get very little of it though, close to zero; all the woody side feels to me more like earthy vetiver paired with some weightless sweet-plushy nonsense like cashmeran. A soapy, clean, really cozy woody base with a nondescript Oriental vibe of spicy, cocoa-infused tonka and probably some red pepper too. Quite generic, but it works, a bit in the same broad league of Tom Ford for Men with less ambery orange, less freshness and a earthier texture, with more ambergris and woods and also a bit more conservative, old school and formal than that (in other words I am not saying these two fragrances smell similar, this was just a matter of, say, a similar “vibe” with similar Oriental chords). Finally I also think there’s something floral, definitely a delicate sweet-grassy vibe which I can’t really identify but it provides an enjoyable sort of silky-powdery touch (someone mentioned iris in another review, it may be it in fact, maybe with a herbal touch of clary sage).
So this is it, you get the picture, an enjoyably mannered albeit rather weak and proudly uninspired spicy-creamy-woody Oriental scent with a sweet floral vibe and a sort of faint mood halfway pedantic and austere, distantly rooted into the classic citrus fougère tradition but also close to several Oriental masculine fragrances from the late 1990’s (to the point I feel this may have been created back then, but I’m not yet skilled enough in converting Creed years in human years so I don’t know what 1850 translates into in real world). Closer to a pale neurotic bourgeois chap than anything or anyone “Imperial”, but a fine scent for sure – a really discreet and close-to-skin fragrance which nonetheless, for some reasons manages to gift you with some sillage consistently coming and going for some hours.
6,5-7/10 (for a fair price)
5/10 (for its actual price)
So this is it, you get the picture, an enjoyably mannered albeit rather weak and proudly uninspired spicy-creamy-woody Oriental scent with a sweet floral vibe and a sort of faint mood halfway pedantic and austere, distantly rooted into the classic citrus fougère tradition but also close to several Oriental masculine fragrances from the late 1990’s (to the point I feel this may have been created back then, but I’m not yet skilled enough in converting Creed years in human years so I don’t know what 1850 translates into in real world). Closer to a pale neurotic bourgeois chap than anything or anyone “Imperial”, but a fine scent for sure – a really discreet and close-to-skin fragrance which nonetheless, for some reasons manages to gift you with some sillage consistently coming and going for some hours.
6,5-7/10 (for a fair price)
5/10 (for its actual price)
