Velours Yves Saint Laurent 2016

Velours, an almost elusive fragrance, despite having been released in 2016. A candidate that makes one wonder why it had to be discontinued.
In response to my predecessor's question, I would like to address it as well, as I hadn't considered it myself until now: Yes, I find it good to test and review discontinued fragrances. At that time, I tested Velours knowing it had already been discontinued. Back then, there were still a few more Souk offers, but it has been rather quiet around it for the past few months. Recently, however, I did manage to get another sample, which I will use sparingly.
I wanted to test it back then nonetheless. Fragrances with such good reviews and comments always intrigue me. I want to test this "treasure," this now rare find, and I want to be captivated. Long searches, sometimes paying high prices per ml, and sometimes you get lucky and come across such popular discontinued fragrances, pure joy. And so I want to rave about this fragrance here and perhaps inspire one or two people to test it. I don't know why, but testing such fragrances is becoming more and more enjoyable for me. After the initial excitement, there's often disappointment when the fragrance isn't as good as hoped, because then getting a bottle is significantly harder than getting a sample. But I'm willing to take that risk.

Now, let's talk about the fragrance itself.
The pyramid looks enticing. Black tea, iris butter, suede, I like all of these base notes.
In the top note, the black tea is initially skipped; for me, it starts immediately with iris butter. Soft, dense, but not as creamy as one might expect from Francesca Bianchi. It becomes a bit powdery, and gradually the suede comes through, which I can also recognize as suede. A bit rough, yet soft. The tea now emerges in the background, adding a gentle note.
In the base, a dark frankincense-vanilla joins in, only subtly sweet, rounded off by woods. The performance is just right, a slightly perceptible cloud when passing by, but to truly experience it, one must come closer. No attention-seeking performance.

Elegance and refinement describe Velours very well. I am a big fan of leathery-powdery DNAs, especially leather with iris butter. Rarely found, even more rarely well-executed. This combination of powerful leather and delicate iris butter works wonderfully.

Overall, Velours strikes me as a somewhat dark and alluring fragrance, with intriguing notes that are beautifully harmonized, and the quality is good, as is often the case with this line. The bottle looks absolutely elegant with this slight dark purple and black running color.

I must confess, neither leather-vanilla nor iris butter-vanilla combinations are new, but so far I don't know of a fragrance where it has been executed better, at least not when considering the entire fragrance progression.

So anyone who can still snag a sample somewhere should seize the opportunity!