Emporio Armani - Stronger With You Amber Giorgio Armani 2023

I'm not a big fan of the Stronger With You lineup, thing that might offend more than half of the TikTok fragrance community. But even the majority of them might agree with me on this one: Emporio Armani - Stronger With You Amber is a completely unnecessary release for the series.

The scent here is simple. It opens with a clear synthetic tone that is quickly masked by some fresh lavender, hardly high quality or very accurate-smelling, and soon you get the typical SWY DNA with that warm, nutty, slightly creamy sweetness. However, the latter is notably toned down here compared to other iterations in the line. That's probably for the sake of having that amber stand out more. Ultimately, the amber shows itself by warming up the scent while working in tandem with the vanilla to keep it sweet, gently applying a resin/benzoin undertone too. There's not much else to it, really. Overall, it's just really lackluster, bland, boring... You name it. Amber is anyways more fitted as a supporting note rather than having the whole composition revolve around it, because let's face it, the market is oversaturated with sweet, vanilla/amber fragrances, and it's genuinely getting old at this point.

Performance was pretty great, as far as longevity goes, stretching it to somewhere around 10 hours. Projection, however, was less impressive, with a pretty decent first two hours that offered plenty but never over-the-top pushing power. 4 hours in and it would pretty much be a skin scent already.

Obviously, you wouldn't wear this during the warmer part of the year. TikTok influencers have made sure of preaching their whole "winter and summer" categories, and if something shows signs of sweetness, it is automatically thrown into the winter camp. That should not be the way we judge fragrances at all, but I guess it does apply for Emporio Armani - Stronger With You Amber or pretty much the whole SWY line. Still, expectedly this is very versatile, made for those who either enjoy ambery fragrances to death or are deeply invested into the SWY series and justify a bottle of Emporio Armani - Stronger With You Amber just for the sake of having the whole collection.

But seriously, this fragrance goes for around $100 or even more, and it's also not as widely distributed as other flankers from the line. That's hardly bad news, because the scent itself is also nothing worth of your time. Even if I still consider them mediocre, many other flankers of the SWY line would offer a better investment than Emporio Armani - Stronger With You Amber. At least a little bit more "character", even though that's not right either given the amount of people wearing SWY these days. So yeah, a very redundant flanker which survives mostly due to TikTok influencers hyping anything from the line. Pathetic.

Overall Rating: 5.9/10

Do yourself a favor and ignore the negativity on fragrantica concerning this. I absolutely love this. Granted it’s not revolutionary or life changing but it is done very well in my humble opinion. I get amber vanilla and a hint of tobacco or some spicy accord of some kind. I’m glad I purchased it. Pro Tip: Tuscan Leather + SWY Amber for the Win. It’s an amazing layering combination to me

The Stronger with You line has a large following within our fragrance community and every single flanker even thought have small minimal changes made an impact, however this one flops in that regard.

Nose behind this is Cécile Matton. She is the nose behind the whole line and well deserved to continue the flankers in my opinion.

This flanker as of this date is a Middle Eastern Exclusive release like Oud, Leather and the new Tobacco which will be coming out soon. As I’m from North America and many of us require to either blind buy this or pay for a sample and then purchase it at a inflated price which will affect the review a bit.

Upon smelling Stronger With You Amber, I could tell that this was a subpar SWY flanker, perhaps one of the worst of the line, especially the exclusive line. The opening starts with the usual stronger with you sweet base of vanilla but also is joined by spicy facets (cardamom and cinnamon). You lose the nutty aspect of the original which made the original kind of unique within the designer realm and this is where Amber loses me. Each flanker had it’s unique take within mostly the opening, either it’s boozy or more woody but it made a difference. This one felt it was taking away everything you like from the original and made it blander.

The opening is very vanillic with those short bursts of spices that you will lose towards the end. You get met also by a lavender note which is actually good, it does not smell like a dryer sheet or any cleaning supply. Lavender does well to bring down the sweetness and make the scent thinner and more aromatic and does help the versatility of this one. The lavender sadly once added with the vanilla fog reminded me of Quentin Bisch recent releases namely 1 Million flankers and Le Male flankers which utilize the same vanillic fog that drowns out any other notes and lavender to balance it out. It makes this scent neither exclusive or worthy of a blind buy as a North American. It smells like any other mass produced top seller.

The drydown is exactly that of lavender with heavy vanillic tones that can be powdery. The interesting pieces aren’t there, the amber gives a little brown hue but nothing resinous here or balsamic which is a shame for a middle eastern release. It’s just a big vanillic bomb at this point.

Overall, it seems all the interesting parts of SWY was removed here, while the other flankers brought something to the table, this one did not. It removed more than it added. We are left with a stripped down SWY EDT with more vanillic sweetness in the backend. It reminds me of a Bisch 1 Million flanker to be honest.

My recommendation is don’t pay the premium price to get your hands on this and don’t blind buy unless you’re a collector, sniff out the 1 Million flanker or the new Le male elixir and you’ll get this same recipe.

Projection: 7 (average)
Longevity: 7 (6-8 hours)
Compliment Factor: 6 (little above average)
Uniqueness: 5
Pricing VS what you get: 4 (retail or at discounters at an inflated price)
Versatility: 6 (average)
Smell: 6 (decent but I think the rest of the line gave me more)
Overall: 6

Buy Try or Pass: I recommend this one as a Pass

This review was based on a decant that I purchased.
Youtube channel: Robes08 (video of this can be seen there)

Armani have released through the years a big number of tops and flops, appartently the Stronger with you line has been a top, because there are so many flankers already to make even a hardcore perfume lover confused.

As if the EDT, EDP, Intensely and so on were not enough, they have decided to approach the Middle Eastern market with Oud, Leather and Amber - Exclusive editions.

This is not a new approach, D&G, Xerjoff and ROJA do it too and I guess the strong spicy orientals loved in Dubai and Abu Dhabi would not be so easy to wear on the streets of Paris or Berlin.

Amber from EA, reminds me 90% of Side Effect from Initio, it´s like they have been done by the same perfumer (maybe they are, Cecíle?) so maybe Saffron, Rum and Hedione are present here too?

And the top, absolute scent with similar DNA would be the D&G The One Luminous Night .. where you also get a kick of spicy saffron which in the Armani is missing.

After the firsts sprays I could sense that this is a flanker of SWY EDT, but after around 30 min. this becomes a very romantic, intimate amber scent with hints of saffron and vanilla in the back and will have an absolute monster silage until the next day on the clothes.

It is not a room filler, like Ombre Nomade .. but in your own bubble, 50-60cm around you, this will project like crazy .. so for a date or office use, I find it ideal.

Between 150€-200€ for 100ml it is absolutely worth it, because it´s not at all below Side Effect which is currently at 240€ for 90ml. Anything about that is overpriced and it is not worth paying, if you ask me.

Enjoy my video, thank you.

This will be a very short one, you can think of this as a longer statement and I am here to HATE. This is the single most boring new release in designer perfumery, %90 percent of winter men’s and women’s winter fragrance has vanilla, amber and lavender in there; some of those notes are already present on other SWY’s, lacks the signature note of SWY (Chestnut) and overpriced as heck. You can find dozens of other fragrances with exact notes at much better prices, performance is decent (Now to think about it, Armani recently sucks at fragrances but they never release a weak fragrance) Armani won’t stop creating fragrances with the least uniqueness and imagination as possible, I still can’t believe that people are rating such boring fragrances too high. Dior Sauvage is an extremely unique fragrance compared to this one, same people who will trash talk about 1 Million EDT, Sauvage EDT, Eros and Bleu de Chanel because they are “overused” are calling this fragrance which is %90 percent similar to everything else on the market “masterpiece” ( Of course everyone has the right to like what they like but if you like this SWY Amber one and call this “unique” and criticize fragrances above because they are not “unique” or they are “overused” because of a contentor from social media you are just dumb.). Fragrance society will not go any further as taste before these people educates their notes and learns critical thinking skills.