Ambre à Sade Nez à Nez 2009

The initial blast on my skin is warm and fruity -- juicy strawberries and blackberries drizzled with thick caramel and creamy vanilla. Within minutes the berries are cloaked by the smoothness of the tonka and the warmth of the amber while the scent continues to hold on to its sweet characteristics.

I find AMBRE A SADE very appealing. The luscious concoction has enough touch of complexity in the mixture of the notes. The caramel and fruit notes continue to dominate while the amber, tonka and cinnamon successfully remain noticeable in the background. The patchouli and cedar are both undetectable on my skin initially, which is not necessarily a bad thing, it's already an addictive scent to my nose. Longevity is a plus at over 8 sweet hours.

Ambre a Sade is all about strawberries dripping in caramel. This is the fancy dessert on the cart that the waiter brings to the table and presents to the group with a flourish of the hand. The room goes silent as caramel slowly drizzles down the mountain of strawberries. Soon the customers are drunk on the strong strawberry and caramel elixir. The smell of this dessert fills the air for days on end. If you love very strong gourmond fruity scents, then this one is for you, but I'd recommend it be used with a light hand or beware!

Sickeningly sweet, burnt caramel and a hint of berries. I so wanted to adore this but it just continued to disappoint each time. The sweetness was too much, and that is coming from me, who loves overly sweet scents. The burnt facet did not do enough to temper the sweetness and the strawberries were not tart enough. Overall a bearable perfume, but only just.

This fragrance opens with an unusual accord made of amber and berry notes on a bed of patchouli and leather. The end result is fruity and sweet, but with an interesting dark edge. The berry notes are best perceived from afar and they burn off quickly. The fragrance then turns into a creamy vanilla and caramel blend, it is rich and creamy. After one and a half hours the berry notes reappear, but differently, deeper and richer than the first ones and also less artificially-smelling. The base of leather remains unchanged throughout the fragrance progression. The dry down is characterised by vanilla.

"We are caught in 'fragrant delight'?" How about "We succumb to a diabetic coma?"

Honestly, I would never, ever have guessed that a perfume named AMBRE A SADE could be a confectionary fragrance. And yet this Nez à Nez composition really is much closer to a loukhoum than to a leather perfume. I actually donned this creation in the hopes of finding something along the lines of Parfum d'Empire AMBRE RUSSE, only a bit less hard hitting.

Well, AMBRE A SADE is definitely less Russian--there is no dark black tea note--but it's also conspicuously devoid of leather, at least to my nose. Instead, the fruity opening cedes very swiftly to a loukhoum-like candy drydown. It is less sweet than the Keiko Mecheri trio or Montale SWEET ORIENTAL DREAM or Serge Lutens LOUVE, but the nougaty aspect is hard to deny.

I'm sure that anyone who bought this blind for the name was very, very disappointed. It should have been named MARSHMALLOW PEEPS.