Baccarat Rouge 540 Maison Francis Kurkdjian 2016 Eau de Parfum

Baccarat Rouge 540 opens with a brief dash of saffron spice infused dulled orange before quickly moving to its heart. As the composition enters its early heart, the orange morphs to a vague, slightly transparent and relatively sweet fruity floral jasmine accord, as powerful woody amber takes on the starring role, with significant powdery oakmoss and fir balsam support. During the late dry-down the composition remains highly linear as the powder infused woody amber continues to control sans the jasmine and sweetness, now with mild cedarwood support through the finish. Projection is very good to excellent and longevity outstanding at nearly 24 hours on skin.

What a stinker Baccarat Rouge 540 is. I knew in seconds I would detest this composition, and sadly after a couple full wearings on skin my opinion hasn't changed. The initial dulled orange is tolerable, but that only lasts five seconds before the composition turns cloyingly sweet from the woody amber, and extremely powdery from an unpleasant and poorly implemented oakmoss and fir balsam tandem that is suffocating to the powder averse like this writer. As the composition is highly linear, things don't change much all the way through the finish, letting the nose torture continue on and on... and on. In truth, there really isn't anything I can say positive about the composition's smell as it is all bad, really. At least on the flip-side for those perfume warriors that can tolerate wearing this scary stuff, the performance metrics, especially longevity, are absolutely outstanding. So if you are insistent on wearing an early "worst new perfume of 2016" candidate (at least easily to the nose of this writer), you will live with this stuff all day and all night without any fear of it wearing off. The bottom line is Baccarat Rouge 540 may seem like a relative bargain at its current selling price of $300 per 70ml bottle (as it originally was sold as a 250 piece limited edition in a fancy Baccarat crystal bottle for an eye popping $4000), but in truth $3 is paying too much for this "poor" to "very poor" 1 to 1.5 stars out of 5 rated horror. Spending your $300 at the baccarat *table* is a better investment.