Top Notes 
Freesia
Mandarin orange leaf
Orange blossom
Ylang-ylang
Heart Notes 
Broom
Champaca flower
Rosewood
Base Notes 
Sandalwood
Vanilla
Vetiver
Alan
Translated · Show original
Alan
Very helpful Review
6
The $5,000 Question
When reading about "Yu" by Mane, it rarely revolves around the scent. It’s about the price. You lay down $5,000 for a bottle of this strictly limited fragrance. Is it worth it? Is any perfume worth that price? But today, I don’t want to deal with that question; I want to focus solely on what my nose perceives.
Yu is said to be the Chinese word for rain, but the scent has very little to do with the smell of petrichor. Instead, it starts with fresh flowers and fruit, a typical representative of the "fruity-floral" direction. The floral aspect is presented through the fresh and slightly spicy note of champaca and orange blossom. Orange blossoms often come across as shrill to my nose, but here they fortunately appear with a mild sweetness. Fruity notes join in, although these are not noted in the fragrance pyramid. My nose interprets them as Nashi, juicy and sweet, with a small piece of watermelon on the side. It’s a watery fruitiness, not overly sweet or sticky, and quite pleasant.
Then Ylang-Ylang joins in. To be fair, I must say that Ylang-Ylang is generally a difficult note for me, either buttery or reminiscent of fabric softener, and "Yu" solidly falls into the latter category, rounded off with a bit of vanillin. White musk seems to further emphasize the sweet-clean impression, and I catch a hidden mintiness, reminiscent more of toothpaste than fresh mint. It’s not an unpleasant smell, but if I wanted to smell like fabric softener, I would just use some.
The fabric softener note eventually fades, and what remains as a base is an abstract fruity-floral impression that reminds me of my former German teacher. Not because he smelled of fruit and flowers, but because he used to say that there was no more devastating criticism than "quite nice." And that is exactly the judgment I have come to about "Yu." The opening is nice. The heart notes are okay. What lingers on the skin after a few hours doesn’t annoy me. In other words, "Yu" is the perfected mediocrity; there’s nothing wrong with it, but there’s also somehow nothing in favor of it. I wouldn’t claim that "quite nice" is the worst thing that can be said about a fragrance, but in a world where scents like "Péché Cardinal" exist in the same fragrance family, "quite nice" simply isn’t enough for me, regardless of the price range.
Yu is said to be the Chinese word for rain, but the scent has very little to do with the smell of petrichor. Instead, it starts with fresh flowers and fruit, a typical representative of the "fruity-floral" direction. The floral aspect is presented through the fresh and slightly spicy note of champaca and orange blossom. Orange blossoms often come across as shrill to my nose, but here they fortunately appear with a mild sweetness. Fruity notes join in, although these are not noted in the fragrance pyramid. My nose interprets them as Nashi, juicy and sweet, with a small piece of watermelon on the side. It’s a watery fruitiness, not overly sweet or sticky, and quite pleasant.
Then Ylang-Ylang joins in. To be fair, I must say that Ylang-Ylang is generally a difficult note for me, either buttery or reminiscent of fabric softener, and "Yu" solidly falls into the latter category, rounded off with a bit of vanillin. White musk seems to further emphasize the sweet-clean impression, and I catch a hidden mintiness, reminiscent more of toothpaste than fresh mint. It’s not an unpleasant smell, but if I wanted to smell like fabric softener, I would just use some.
The fabric softener note eventually fades, and what remains as a base is an abstract fruity-floral impression that reminds me of my former German teacher. Not because he smelled of fruit and flowers, but because he used to say that there was no more devastating criticism than "quite nice." And that is exactly the judgment I have come to about "Yu." The opening is nice. The heart notes are okay. What lingers on the skin after a few hours doesn’t annoy me. In other words, "Yu" is the perfected mediocrity; there’s nothing wrong with it, but there’s also somehow nothing in favor of it. I wouldn’t claim that "quite nice" is the worst thing that can be said about a fragrance, but in a world where scents like "Péché Cardinal" exist in the same fragrance family, "quite nice" simply isn’t enough for me, regardless of the price range.