MarcMo

Ah, 2015, a great year. Nothing against 2020, of course, that year was also... unique, but 2015? No, this 2020 doesn't come close to a 2015.

It will soon be six years since I "discovered" the site we all love and devote ourselves to so diligently. Back then, on Boxing Day 2014, I had no idea about perfume or the discoveries that were to come my way. Not that I would call myself a scholar today, certainly not. But I have been able to make my experiences with the help of this site, my first conscious perfume decisions can all be traced back to what I have read here. But why now this, my first, comment on a perfume?

Quite simply, this was my first critical engagement with other opinions I had read here. I had previously made blind purchases of fragrances I had come across here. There were some of my favorite fragrances (A*Men Pure Malt, Virgin Island Water, Tobacco Vanilla or even Chergui) and some fragrances that I initially talked myself beautiful, but with which I just could not warm (The Dreamer or Rochas Man).

But Dior Homme was the one fragrance that confused me. Then (December 2015) as now, it was in the top25 men's fragrances on the site and I had heard its name mentioned with reverence in countless videos. "Wow," I thought to myself, "this is it. The one scent you still need." So checked directly with Notino, then still iparfuemerie: 80€. Whew, after VIW and Tobacco Vanille had already taken a mighty toll on my trainee salary, that was a hefty price tag. Especially in the run-up to Christmas, when you had presents to get. So I did something extremely unusual for my then self: I did not buy the bottle blindly on the Internet, but drove with a buddy to Bremen, 80 kilometers away, to "taste" the fragrance there.

No sooner said than done, we both in the Opel Astra juckelt into the Hanseatic city, off to the Douglas, Dior Homme pulled from the shelf, off on the strip - Baaah. That was supposed to be him? This was supposed to be the number 13 best fragrance for men? If this was the mountaintop, I didn't even want to smell the plateaus below.

Lipstick in a dark wooden box, drowned out by a powder glaze as thicker and could not be.

I was so insanely disappointed, 10€ gas money for nothing, now it could only be called home. No, I didn't want to smell like that, I was physically repulsed. That smelled to me like the wooden make-up box of an aged lady.

Luckily my mate persuaded me to stay a bit longer, he needed some more jeans and would like to browse the shops next door. Actually, I just wanted to go home, but it was after all his car. So we walked through the shops like this. And quickly I noticed it: when applying the scent to the test strip, a few splashes had probably landed on my wrist. I remember it like today: I tried to rub them off with some water, rub them out, erase them. The main thing is no longer on my skin, I was sure I had found my personal fragrance nemesis.

But Dior Homme, Mr. Lipstick, knew better. He wasn't going to surrender, he wasn't going to let me go, he knew that a coercive relationship was the best thing for everyone involved in this case. And as much as I resisted, he was starting to please me. The harsh opening gave way to a delicious heart note and later a base note to kneel down in, a warm veil enveloped me and I couldn't stop smelling my wrist.

I left my buddy outside the dressing room and 5 minutes later bought my first bottle of Dior Homme. It was the first time a fragrance had simply overwhelmed me, turned me against itself, only to win me over in a long, cozy embrace.

I often and fondly think back to that winter day 5 years ago. Every single perfume surrounded then this certain magic, which after enjoying so many different fragrances, now and then you have to manually in front of your eyes again. Never before and never after has a perfume grabbed me as emotionally as Dior Homme did on a moderately cold winter day in 2015. Never since then have I been able to perceive the top note exactly the way I did back then. And yet, that fragrance is always associated with it in me.

Thank you for your years together, Mr. Lipstick.