Convinced I would love this, I blind bought a new bottle of Knowing for cheap and wore it several times before handing it off to someone else who could love it properly. I was startled to find that Knowing in the current formulation smells uncannily like a college dorm's laundry room. Have you ever left your clothes in the washer too long and then thrown them in the dryer with 4 or 5 highly scented dryer sheets and hoped for the best? That's what this reminds me of. Smelling this called to mind a startling olfactory memory: warm and extreme soapy powdery detergent musk mixed with a tinge of mildew and the remnants of a couple sprays of my beloved Aromatics Elixir on a favorite hoodie. Clean, familiar and comfortable, even nostalgic but not moving.
If I could cut the detergent note down by 3/4 I might love it. As is, I'm left feeling blase about Knowing and wondering what the vintage smells like. I can see why Estee Lauder might do this to an old school chypre as many younger consumers are looking for scents that smell more like functional products rather than a complex composition with bitter and green nuances like this presumably used to smell like.
