People my age in the United States know what patchouli is. They might not know the name, the origin, the extraction method, but they know it. Why? Because one of every ten kids to 1960’s parents smelled like it. Their house smelled like it. They also listened to music that was 500% cooler than your parents’ music. They had the Dead Head on the back windshield. They knew how good the pianist for Phish was. Their kid had an innate Plus 7 Bonus to the Bass Player Skill and likely repped Primus in high school. They smoked weed is what I’m saying here, but it’s a particular kind of smoking weed: a post-hippie way of life. It wasn’t loved by non-hippies; that smell could cost you a job interview around here.
After years of exploring interesting fragrances, one thing to me was clear: avoid patchouli. I work in an office, and the context alone was contentious enough that you couldn’t go to work with it, but I didn’t like that smell either. I was on board with the metallic green edge of it, but the earthiness, unlike the earthy smokiness of vetiver, was just too much. It carried an internal connotation of BO and skunk joints. So when I learned about Sauvage EDP (not the EDT) in my post-Covid renewed search for scents, I steered clear. Obviously, this was The Bro Scent. I saw that commercial. Johnny Depp and an CG coyote did not make this look any better. And on top of all that, the official description shouted from the rooftops that it had god-darned patchouli. No thanks. But I couldn’t have been more wrong! The first sign was Guilty Absolute pour Homme: on its head, a leather-and-latex comfort zone with a little minerality, but in the background, a familiar sharp, green edge around the side of it.
I’ve formed a bit of an internal scale to measure scents. Not male to female, not designer to niche, but more a spectrum ranging from a Pure Blend to a Soliflore. A Pure Blend makes absolutely no notes stick out: the scent is its own thing, or it’s abstractly a scene. Your Clive Christians with a zillion notes. Bvlgari Man In Black with its sweet sophisticated black-tie accord. On the extreme opposite side, a soliflore is one simple note. Near the blends are your mostly blended things featuring a couple notes. Near the soliflores are the note expressions, the studies (or etudes if you’re musical) on one ingredient (or one supposed ingredient’s accord). That’s a Hibiscus Mahajád, a Guilty Absolute pour Homme with its leather accord front and-center.
Sauvage Eau de Toilette (the EDT) is on the blend side: a bit of a kaleidoscopic citrus edge to it. But Sauvage Eau de Parfum (the EDP) is more on the accord/note expression side of things, an etude in the clearness of fractioned patchouli. My stubborn nose stayed away from it due to the patchouli-note marketing long enough that I’d tested a zillion designer and niche scents and came back to it when I had nothing to do in an Ulta, returning some face thing my wife got. She thought this Messi Elixir was nice, and my impression of it was “it’s a little bit of patchouli with blue, but it’s weak and I bet it’s a bit like that Sauvage over there.” In confirming my suspicions I found myself knocked back, doing a triple take: this wasn’t what I’d expected at all. It had nothing to do with the many scents I’d see retroactively called a “Sauvage Clone” once I tried it. This was a ambrox-boosted reframing of patchouli for me, removing everything I couldn’t stand about it and loving everything I liked about it.
And so, I checked myself. Discussed some things I liked that shared the feeling I had with Sauvage EDP. And yeah, I was wrong: I never should have *supposedly* avoided patchouli, and I’d actually been enjoying it for years without knowing. I was so used to bad patchouli with bad other stuff in it: earthiness, hippie funk, the head-shop attempt at covering up a weed smell. The oily, round, buttery pungency I associated with patchouli oil is nowhere to be found here; instead, a little citrus sharpens patchouli’s often fuzzy lines. Pepper raises up the edge. Ambroxan (wrongfully maligned for something it isn’t) mediates and sweetens the deal just enough. Spices bolster the middle.
[Update 7/26: Bergamot - and I mean the peels, the Earl Grey Bergamot, has shown itself here in the past month. It’s an enjoyable thing - it reminds me of a good bar of bergamot-scented soap far more than tea or a dessert.]
And wait… then it hit me: what I had known as an old-school sandalwood accord had always been bolstered by this thing they had in common with Sauvage EDP: fractioned patchouli. My pursuit of every Santal 33 Eau de Parfum chaser in hopes of finding that old Sandalwood Cologne charm came up short, but here it was: in a thing that doesn’t really have sandalwood. That’s why I’m getting barbershop, dad juice, but this one just freaking works so well for me. Now I have a whole new genre to explore with patchouli. Look out, Patchouli Magnetik, I’m headed your way.
So I took that on my arm home with me. Checked it every hour. Checked it with my wife. Loved it. Wife loved it. Christ, had I really just smelled everything at a Neiman Marcus and went with friggin’ Sauvage; in a bottle so worn out that Ulta wrote “Sauvage Eau de Parfum” on white paper and taped it to the bottle; that’s what I opted for? Well look, competitively you can get the Big Bottle for less than those other ones so… well dang.
The drydown on me is comfortable, cooling and a little sweet and a little herbal. It’s on the shaving cream side, but not the shower gel side, if you get what I mean. The vanilla and ambrox plus the herbal cooling-ness of it almost evokes Sung Homme Eau de Toilette (modern version) which notoriously didn’t work on my skin as the sweetness ramped itself up to eleven and became a Sugar Coated Corpse on me. Here the blend just works on this skin.
Look, I love this. And maybe I just have terrible taste! It’s altogether possible. Don’t take the ramblings of an autistic reviewer as gospel. But because I’m not located in a big city or a high school or whatever, I hadn’t been over-exposed to this. By approaching Sauvage EDP as a been there, done that scent-seeker, I came to it with a blank slate and found an absolutely ingenious exploration of a note- so well-done that I’m on board with patchouli now. Put that String Cheese Incident album away, we’re wearing suits and ties tonight.
UPDATE 1: Apparently now something reminds my wife of Polo Green, which her dad wore. That checks out. I love Polo Green. Also, that’s a little weird. Oh well, her dad had three bottles: original Kouros, Polo Green, and Polo Blue. He had good taste!
