This starts off slightly floral and soapy, but the floral note disappears very quickly. Then the juniper berry takes over. It’s a little sharp, but in a really pleasant, clean way.
Give it a couple of minutes and the soapiness starts to come forward again. It’s very well blended, though, so depending on what you focus on, or simply how it wafts in your direction, you might get more of that soapy character, or you might get the sharper, cleaner juniper. The two work remarkably well together.
What’s especially interesting is a strange note I get that almost reminds me of the lingering scent of cigarette smoke, but in a good way. Imagine someone wearing a nice cologne who had been around someone else who smoked. Not actively smoking, and not an ashtray smell; just that faint trace of smoke clinging in the background. If you’ve known a smoker, you probably know exactly what I mean.
My bottle is very, very old, so that could simply be a result of age. I don’t know whether it was part of the original scent profile. Either way, it works surprisingly well. I also wonder whether fragrances from that era were intentionally made to coexist with cigarette smoke. Smoking was so common that even people who didn’t smoke were constantly around people who did, so fragrances inevitably had to live in that environment.
More than anything, though, this smells like every beloved older family member you’ve ever had.
I keep a little of this bottle because it reminds me of a family member. I once let a coworker smell it, and their immediate reaction was that it reminded them of their grandfather.
Some fragrances smell good. Some fragrances smell like a memory. This one does both.
