Atelier d'Artiste Nez à Nez

I have yet to discover a perfume from Nez à Nez which really speaks to me. ATELIER D'ARTISTE is another in a series of creations which seem like they're made with a lot of interesting ingredients, and in which I sense a lot of effort from the perfumer, but somehow the final product does not cohere with my olfactory sensibilities.

This is a thick, somewhat sweet, and heavy oriental with a strong wood presence but also a strong vanilla presence and also a strong spirits presence along with a bunch of other stuff thrown in as well. My problem is that I cannot really parse ATELIER D'ARTISTE. There are so many different notes stirred together, but they do not come together in the end to produce a harmonic or synthetic whole before my nose. Instead, they smell like a bunch of different individually interesting notes stirred together.

I have encountered this sort of creation many times, and it seems to be especially common in the haute niche houses. So maybe I should be glad that I certainly don't "get" it, but I also don't really like it. The perfumes of this type which I've smelled often cost much more than some of the oriental perfumes which I find easier to wrap my nose around and much more appealing aesthetically. Just lucky, I guess.