Homme Xerjoff 2007

When I first stood before the Monte Rosa massif in the Dolomites, the view was simply overwhelming. With the upcoming tour in mind, one could clearly feel the respect and the adrenaline building up, flowing through the entire body... and yet the anticipation of what lay ahead prevailed.
With this anecdote from a climbing holiday in Italy, I would like to illustrate to the interested reader how my first experience with Homme unfolded: The fragrance greets you with a certain coldness and distance upon first wear, not very inviting and quite imposing. I smell citrusy and slightly soapy accords with a clearly dominant oily, subtly smoky foundation. What do I mean by oily? For me, Homme evokes the initially strange association with motor oil. Anyone who has ever entered a car workshop surely knows this mix of motor oil and the scent of tire and brake wear that lingers in the air. Consequently, the fragrance presents a very pure, raw masculinity, uncompromising and very direct, especially at the beginning.
As the fragrance develops, the originally quite eccentric citrus accords recede, and the smoky and oily notes become fully aware of their dominance. But now the scent profile of Homme breaks through: A very elegant, cool leather note and a hint of sweetness enter the stage. The associations change. The pure masculinity of Homme shifts into a sublime, stylish elegance. Suddenly, the fragrance fits into the business world, with suits, at festivities, in the theater. However, Homme presents itself to me as distinctly conservative and opinionated.
I am now sustainably enthusiastic about this Xerjoff composition. This apparent contradiction of initially puristic masculinity and professional, stylish elegance combines into an incredibly multifaceted and perhaps therefore so fascinating fragrance. The inherent dissonance of these two fundamentally different facets is never truly resolved, but it works wonderfully!