Mike212

I live in New York City, and the only way my nights would smell like this would be if I fell into a vat of caramel and drowned in it. Except that’s not even a great analogy, because New York Nights fades so quickly that I wouldn’t have time to drown. This stands out as one of the most poorly blended fragrances this side of an CVS check-out lane. Are the materials high quality? Who knows—they are overwhelmed by Ethyl Maltol. The quality to price ratio here is so small you’d need an electron microscope to find it.

This is a blandly sweet, fruity thing in the vein of Kurky. It evokes a vape pen more than a perfume. It smells perfectly nice in a synthetic fruit candy way, but there’s nothing unique, interesting, or refined about it. Tested from a hand decanted sample from Nordstrom, an authorized retailer (they do this if you buy something).

In an age of tiresome trend chasing, I appreciate a fragrance that's just great. I wore this a couple weeks ago and, without the original as comparison, it smelled as I remember Acqua di Parma Colonia EDC. Mercifully, it's not an Ambroxan bomb, which most "modernized" fragrances are. Performance was a bit better than the EDC, and for that, it has a reason to exist. Acqua di Parma Colonia Il Profumo is a classic and invigorating soapy scent--and a decently performing freshie--and for that it has a place in my heart.

I first encountered this on the jetway walking out to a plane. The woman wearing it was boarding right in front of me. I smelled this slightly sweet, spicy, and sexy smell. I initially mistook the bay leaf for cinnamon, but it’s different and very unique in perfume. I don’t get tea per se, but it’s evocative of tea. She sat right behind me and I smelled it throughout the flight and it was divine. When the flight ended, I had to compliment her and ask her what it was and it was The Noir—she showed me a little mini bottle of it that she had in her purse. The irony is that I have a The Noir sample from Le Labo, but I was so grossed out by all the other samples I got from them that I had given up and never tried it on. Live and learn.

It starts off as a cherry scented magic marker for about 60 seconds and quickly dries down to a syrupy sweet amber soup. I picture a precocious nine-year-old calling this “mid” because there isn’t anything particularly nice or memorable about it. At any price, this is uninspired. At $400, it’s insulting.