Wow! for Women Joop! 2018 Eau de Toilette

It took me a few tries to get the scent - so not exactly what a "Wow!" usually expresses. So much for the name ;)
Otherwise I can't do much with Joop, off the top of my head I can only think of Le Bain, which I always thought was awful, and Homme Extreme, which my boyfriend thought was awful. So I usually walk right past the Joop corner. But something about the presentation made me want to try it, and at least I found the scent interesting enough that I didn't just check it off afterwards. The top notes and parts of the heart notes are a bit unusual and suggest a very different scent than it turns out to be later. So he has an exciting course ;)

But with time I got used to the "disturbing" somewhat squeaky raspberry note, and after about 20-30 minutes it combines nicely with the rose, instead of drowning it out. Up until here, I would have expected some pink raspberry rose candy (probably with vanilla and cashmeran as a base too, yawn). Instead, what emerges here is a sort of deep, dark red rose scent that I've very rarely sniffed in the drugstore to mainstream perfume chain sector ("Rosenrot" would also be such a candidate, but I find that one more oily, while "Wow!" is much more fruity). Well, with Moonlight Patchouli (contrary to the name also a rose fragrance) it can not compete in quality, but it is also more versatile, precisely because it lacks these high-quality scented powdery-elegant nuances.

I'd buy it more as a sweeter change from Aigner's Explosive - the heart and base have almost the same dark patchouli rose (someone once described it as metallic in Explosive, I'd half-sign that). In Explosive it's drier, here it's fruitier and softer. The patchouli isn't quite as earthy, which makes the scent much more pleasing to those around who aren't fans of cellar mustiness. The combination here is more quaffable than musty or gruff.
Explosive is, of course, much more complex (some would call it overloaded, the 80s say hello - oak moss! Aldehydes!!), but sometimes I like something more straightforward better, which isn't so taxing on the nose.

You could probably make the top notes a bit more harmonious, but I've learned to tune those out after a few years of perfume testing. I would even estimate that about 1/3 of my favorite fragrances have a rather unpleasant start. Conversely, however, there are many more fragrances that I like the head of, but then turn nasty, lackluster, or boring, and I find that much more annoying.

The durability I had to correct since my statement upwards: I have me in the drugstore, about the 5th time testing, Wow! "properly" sprayed on and 2 days later the same sweater again put on, this time I wore Encre Noire (yes, the men's fragrance, my nose feels that as gender-neutral). Another day later, the sweater still smelled like Encre Noire, but also smelled like the Patchouli Rose from Wow! (the blend is great too by the way, I'll probably layer the scents more often. And maybe I can so my friend to the "old closet" EN accustomed :P ).

The bottle is, to put it nicely, not that special. The color is nice and fits the fragrance, but in the drugstore I have chipped a fingernail on the extremely tight-fitting closure and otherwise it is just a glass jar with paper label, which already looks worn on the test bottle newly unpacked before my eyes. But at least he sprayed well.