Davide

I am grateful for this community, which is always critical of consumption and literature, and I enjoy looking for gifts for special people.

Thanks to BonOdeur for the sample! I'm also glad that the package included a nice contribution, Marbert Woman. This helped me to understand this work of art in its traditional line "Chypre". It immediately corresponds to a picture.

Right to the scent. The top note says playfully and unmistakably: you might like me, but I only get what I want. Relationship status: Private. The Bulgarian rose absolutely emphasizes her plump red lips, which speak what the heart note feels and thinks. Why makeup! She carries a briefcase and always looks extremely professional. She is in her mid-20s and where she wanted to go after a quick degree at international universities. Whether Shanghai or UAE, neither the souks nor the advances of the sheikhs could stop her. She runs straight up the stairs, the cameras follow her (not the other way around) and towards the lectern, where she smiles and addresses the guests with "Welcome". That's enough. Everyone smiles back. This is the basis for a pleasant conversation. The men's hearts beat faster. Much longer than at Shalimar, Le Bain and Co, because the men don't control it.

Suppose he were someone else, he'd be happy just to talk to her. But he is him and prefers to imagine that he has shared every thought with her since he spoke to her and took her hand
For he will always support her as much as she stands behind him when he steps before his hall.

Even if I usually like to describe a fragrance for a longer time, not here! There is something else more important to me. What do you ladies want with all these expensive sweets? Only boys and girls want to snack. Men want to fight for something that seems unattainable. And women want the same thing. There's no reason to give it up. Woody scents are loved by men. That's why they buy them. And here, the woody is packaged to steal the men's thunder, including Bogart's One Man Shows and the raise. The point of this piece of art is not whether men can wear it, but whether they can't even let them wear it in the first place. Appropriation. Equal opportunity. Subversion.

This is professionalism. That seems to me to be Nathalie Lorson's female counterpart to Encre Noire. It has what it takes to improve the rules by which we play. And that's postmodern too. Female boss without shoulder pads, but with tradition

Here I give 10 out of 10 with full conviction, because Marbert Homme is only retro. "Welcome to the next level" like 6 Space by ILS on good speakers or Soldier of Love by Sade.

Havana is a fragrance with an extroverted top note, a smooth heart note that maintains the sovereign balance and expression of the ingredients and a long base note that can be perceived for a good 6 h+. It's all about expression, because in this Cuban bar, every heart beats. First of all it's over with sweet. It's all about passion. And the dance has begun.
In my head, Buena Vista Social Club, Esperanto from Freundeskreis, is running on the old shellac record player and in the old wooden shelf you can see the communist manifesto next to all kinds of cookbooks of spicy and intense dishes. A wafer-thin pinch of vanilla moves from the kitchen into the nose and mixes with the smell of the old cigar. The music and the smoke blow together in a wind chime through the streets and still reach the mountains with the steaming palm trees and the old coniferous woods. The slight coolness in the shade of the monumental Cuba pine in front of the building, which is decorated with all kinds of paintings, is quickly forgotten.

Even though Christmas is celebrated cold in Europe. Here, people heat up and after this first hour, which seems like an epoch, the vanilla tobacco smoke rises like a blue haze in the dance bar and is accompanied by the smell of the cinnamon stars that are served from the kitchen. I buy a drink for the lady of my heart and toast her with a glass of rum before I get up and lead her onto the dance floor with a smile and a kiss on the cheek.

Only now begins what I call "sovereign balance and the expression of the components". It's something different from Contenance, but damned close: it's also over. A mixture of tension and relaxation. A pirouette with luck. And from then on, nothing else matters.

Except our opinions during the intense conversation after our dance, whether Hemingway or Marx belonged on this wooden shelf and what Obama has done for Cuba. In the end we embrace each other deeply and promise to be like brother and sister, because that is what it is all about. We sit relaxed on a leather couch and I notice: We like vanilla, fresh, natural, unsweet. And I like and kiss her neck. A nice common denominator

Anyone who wakes up in the morning after that night in the bar and smells the tobacco smell on their clothes will be glad that they are not going out again. Non-smokers are the real connoisseurs

And now more objectively:
1. The top note: basil, tarragon and tangerine, but in the spice shop next to caraway and green tea (the start at the bar next to the kitchen).
2. The heart note: tobacco, cinnamon, vanilla and fir (the dance in the smoke).
3. The base note: oak, leather, musk and sandalwood (the conversation on the leather couch)

"He thought to himself, "Breathe again," as he took a deep breath and in the midst of a cool breeze that stroked through the forest tops and heard his own breathing in the midst of the chirping of the small birds and crickets, blurred to the sound: "Mhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. A last look was taken at the deep valley lying fallow in front of them with the rolled down pine trunks, which seemed to have smashed together to a kind of bird's nest from this height. It stood 1,277 m above the water level, to which the mountain stream twirling like a sewing thread at the bottom seemed hesitant to adorn itself. Sport!

The two gloves tightly grasped the handlebars of his full suspension mountain bike as if welded on. Suddenly, every detail of the so far so grandly safe technology seemed to him to be of utmost importance. Everything mattered long ago. Can the hot chain withstand the stresses of spontaneous jumps over branches and trunks lying around? Is there still enough air in the front suspension? Does the ergomically free-swinging saddle dampen the vibrations of a hard impact after a necessary evasion from the path at the return? Was the decision in favour of the unplatable tyre on the rear wheel the right one, or does it lack the important flexibility on stones? Does the inflated front tyre withstand a pointed gravel stone or a sudden torrent crossing? What if there's a bug in the eye? And should the bike really be faster than the body, can the click pedals be released? ...

Many summers already he drove over clearings illuminated by the sun like a magnifying glass, which radiate a noble and sublime permanence hot steaming from the moss soil and yet are so different. Every time the microbe and mushroom cultures ate old tribes again and made room for new life. He had long since abandoned the crazy idea of trying out the superiority of culture over nature in this abandoned environment. His grapefruit deodorant in the midst of a cool freshness of ferns and wet, cold fir cones seemed to him like the epitome of the arrogance of human culture. And the realization that this impression testified to a deeply felt romanticism did not make the descent any less difficult. He caught himself dodging the rabid decision to take this trail with stick and stone, as it comes, by delaying it in thought. The valley seemed to spread deeper and deeper before him, and the more his eyes got used to the darkness, the clearer the proportions on the ground became for him.

The peak of human pride in his head was precisely the question of whether it is not much more arrogant and dishonest to design a perfume (the symbol of human triumphs over animals developed out of olfactory camouflage) in such a way that it appears "natural" without revealing its synthetics, or whether it is more honest to say "yes" to the applied sophistication of grapefruit synthetics and let both smells wrestle with each other. Never mind! The only wrestling was that of the rings of the tires now gradually turning and flashing in the sun, they set themselves under steaming mud in motion. "One thing is for sure..." he thought, "the faster I get on the descent, the straighter I drive and the less I get into a roll and endanger my posture". Since then there has been only one thought in his head: "Off to the depths!" A smile ran through his face, that of a madman and that was the last thing you saw of him, before he, totally intoxicated with adrenalin and dopamine, arrived on the ground in his beloved cider tavern to order a Schöfferhofer grapefruit and call his girlfriend that everything was going well and he'll be back soon.

On the one hand, I would like to emphasize that Highlands is rated as layer scent. On the other hand, avoid comparing it as a "dupe" with an "original" already read here. Furthermore, I would like to point out that Highlands does not have to be granted autonomy in order to have a "great" performance as a layer.

Highlands is a fragrance that is typically fresh in the top note, typically woody in the long-lasting heart note and typically mossy-herbaceous in the even more generously persistent base note. All three areas are used by fans of Armani He/ Lui, the almost forgotten Bottega Veneta pour Homme and the - comparatively - hyped Dior Sauvage.

This "typical" makes Highlands either a layer, or in my opinion misunderstood by others a "dupe". Because for He/ Lui he lacks the fine-spicy intensity, for pour Homme the woody-strong character and for Sauvage the peppery-nose-soaked elitism (which "convinces" in such a way that it attracts the masses). So what's the Highland spray for? Because neither a noble and dignified Bergamot-Vanilla Zweiklang comes up, nor more than simple memories of said EdTs and perfumes, with which a replacement / Dupe becomes useless.

A simple picture is enough to underline this. A woman who is unrestrainedly in love with a certain man is also in love with him because the two can smell each other, because of his scent. This is about the clear independence, which can be unmistakably smelled for humans. Another man, who may smell similar, will only remind the woman of her love. And that makes her think of her "original". The Dupe hardly has any more special meaning. That brings us to the end of my argumentation.

Whoever is aware that both He/ Lui and pour Homme run out of air after two to five hours and knows that this is due to the weak base note in each case, will find support in Highlands as a layer, which helpfully lacks the soul in the head and heart note. After two hours, He/Lui still smells of himself, with a base note emerging that can carry his "soul". As far as pour Homme is concerned, the subtle precious woods remain stronger as long as their trees are bedded on a mossy, woody-soft base humus. I think it is inappropriate to lay Sauvage out, unless we only want to save money because its shelf life remains good and anyone who likes Sauvage can continue to stand by it.