Onfray

Preliminary: Liquid Karl is the only fragrance so far, which I have approached about its genesis.
And that for a designer fragrance in the cheap segment. Who would have thought that.
Admittedly, the collaboration between Karl Lagerfeld or his label and H&M in 2004 was already something not quite common. Perhaps that is already the first reason that makes this fragrance special for me.

And since I approached the fragrance in this way, I would also like to follow this path in the review.

First encountered the perfume is me still nameless and unfortunately no longer fully reconstructible in one of the numerous interviews or talk show appearances of Karl Lagerfeld. I still can not exactly grasp why, but somehow fascinate me, yes captivate me these conversations, especially those from the early 2000s, the after the last great external transformation. Many will probably know, but nevertheless it should be said again, that it was predominantly a strict diet, with which about 40 kilos dissolved and which was altogether part of a kind of metamorphosis of the person.
So one of the conversations was - as is often the case - about losing weight, slimness, the narrow, even thin, "figure-hugging" men's fashion coined by Hedi Slimane at Dior, through which "slim fit" and "skinny fit" replaced the era of baggy jeans.
Ultimately, of course, many of the conversations condensed into the questions "how did you do it?" and "how do you maintain your weight?" Among various references to the doctor, the diet, the changed habits, it was also once said that Karl Lagerfeld had a fragrance created that made him feel full. As someone who is interested in fragrances and not really in dieting, this naturally made me sit up and take notice. Unfortunately, this was only a short episode, but the thought and the idea were anchored in my head.

Of course, I then started to do some research. However, I couldn't really find anything about what this "saturation scent" was all about. Probably a special production of some perfumer or aromatherapist. The customer was solvent, after all...
I ticked off the subject, but never quite forgot it.

A few years later, however, a few more pieces of the puzzle fell into place for me, bringing me closer to the mysterious scent. The most important were a book and an interview from 2004.

The interview took place in 2004 at Reinhold Beckmann. It is also still good to find on youtube. Also here it is about the diet and also about the question about the influence of the smells.
Two sentences fall there. First of Beckmann: "There are moments, where you can smell the hunger". Later by Lagerfeld: "Before, I was the victim of my nose".

For this you have to know that 2004 was exactly the year in which the Lagerfeld brand entered into a cooperation with H&M for one season. I then read about this cooperation in the book "Merci Karl" by Arnaud Maillard.

Here it says at the crucial point:
"To complete the collection, Karl also designed some accessories: Bangles, rings and belts. And then there's the perfume. The couturier pays attention to little niceties - so he requested that a sample of the perfume be sent to Stockholm (to the people in charge at H&M) with the designs. He created the fragrance a few months ago, and its code name is "Liquid Karl". The perfume smells like warm bread and chocolate, which Karl "prefers to have in his nose than on his hips." The Swedes are sure to go weak...and in fact, they accept all the accessories and the perfume."

After what is otherwise admittedly a rather mediocre book, I was naturally electrified. Was this "Liquid Karl" about to be the "saturation fragrance" I was looking for?
A final proof I have of course not, but when I could get the (now rare and hard to get) perfume here at Parfumo at the dear Easyfish (thanks again at this point for the pleasant deal) and smelled it for the first time, everything fit for me together.

Liquid Karl smells unique. I have yet to smell anything comparable. I actually smell bread. Toasted, dark bread. I compared it directly. Toasted whole wheat bread has an earthy/fashionable aspect to it. You don't get that with croissants or light bread.

Chocolate, on the other hand, I don't smell. So no sweet chocolate, as you perceive it for example in the Benzoe resin. A cocoa aspect there is already, but rather the cocoa bean in the pure and rather little edible state. To the "bakery smell", the sweet greasiness is completely missing here. Consequently, the scent doesn't make me hungry either. He is rather a reminder that the satisfaction of ravenous hunger also means no lasting bliss.

But the components of the fragrance pyramid are quite perceptible. The frangipani seems to provide here for the slightly musty sweetness, which is just no sugar sweetness.
The combination of cedar and oak moss in the base is of course very familiar and should perhaps make the fragrance wearable. In short, however, I consider this a failure. I feel the fragrance as unwearable. Therefore, I spare myself here also any words to the performance.

However, the image that joined in my head makes this fragrance for me all the more exciting and makes me cheer to know it in my collection. This could be a purpose fragrance for a well-known fashion designer that he initially had created to personally help himself lose weight. Whether he used it as a perfume himself or more as a selective scent stimulus is unknown, but I would guess the latter. The most amazing thing about the whole story, however, is that this fragrance was then offered (possibly with a few minor adjustments but in essence as is) to one of the most successful heavyweights in low-priced fashion at the time, and that those responsible immediately accepted this unwearable scent and put it on the market as a perfume.

Commercially successful, the fragrance seems to have been, as was the entire short season of Lagerfeld and H&M collaboration. However, he was probably rightly not continued, perhaps the biggest perfume fake of the last decades.

In recent years, a lot has happened in terms of (niche) perfumes. Gone are the days when, apart from the "standards" of the fashion brands, nothing could be found except in hard-to-find basement boutiques. Even drugstores now carry a wide range of brands apart from the fashion labels, sometimes even brands specializing in fragrances. This trend I do not want to evaluate here (diversity, brand confusion of large cosmetic companies, unity in the niche, etc.), the forum is the right place.

However, this introduction was particularly important to me for the review of this cologne, because:
Due to the above-described development, there is in the upper price segment now unimagined choice. Thereby, everything is from junk about artistic claim to beautiful compositions. The more exciting I find it again and again to discover products that are outside this "circus" and still convince.

Who is looking for the The Ambre Bergamotte online, lands not at ALZD or at the large meanwhile also much niche leading providers, but at Carrefour or the Nouvelle Epicerie.
At "customers also searched" does not appear the latest Frapin, Malle, Amouage. No, with me appear toilet paper, disposable razor blades and the aftershave in the price range to 2€.
For the sake of fairness, I must mention at this point, however, that I became aware of this fragrance, of course, only because it was officially created by Aliénor Massenet. And since I cover myself not only in the supermarket with perfume, she is of course already well known to me from other fragrances, such as Replica - Jazz Club.

The cologne itself convinces first of all by its price. 6 - 10 € for 250 ml I think is fine. Especially here I am almost proud of this bottle in front of me: we Germans, always price-conscious, some would say stingy. But with perfume, and then still niche, there is but cheap = cheap = bad. Really?
For me, we have here an excellent example that good fragrances do not have to be expensive. And it is actually so simple: Keep it simple!

Of course, we have here no compositional miracle before us and also the so-called "performance" is not breathtaking (Although I am really positively surprised by the durability for a cologne). But in this case, it is easy to say: Then just take more. Does not hurt.
The fragrance itself is rock solid but simply beautiful. He contains (and I deliberately do not say "starts with", because development well you guessed it...) an orange, which actually comes very fruity, but never drifts into the candy-like. Here I already suspect the trained hand of Ms Massenet: using an Orange Blossom Absolute is not enough here, but there is a composition behind it that takes the orange in a sweet direction, without acidity and only a very subtle bitterness. To me, this sweetness harmonizes very nicely with the tea note. The addition of "red tea" in the notes is very important. I detect a note that I have rarely encountered before that goes in the rooibos direction. The sometimes somewhat ethereal jasmine-like impact of many other tea scents is completely absent here. The base, as the name implies, is an amber note that is not spectacular but soft and flattering.

Especially now that the days are getting warm (finally!!) this scent is wonderful for me to get through the day on a light breeze and dream of flowers, fruits and carefree holidays. It's totally unisex, even if all those who still cling to the strict categorization would probably push it more towards feminine because of the floral aspects. And most importantly, it gives me another feeling I haven't had in a long time: it's really fun to pour a little of its colognes into your hand in the morning (it doesn't come with an atomizer) and generously slap it all over yourself. So instead of discreet spraying quasi a "rolling" in the fragrance.
For all who are looking for the niche away from the niche industry, certainly worth an order.

Right now is the time to wear this fragrance and right now is also the time to write a review about it. Because Jazz Club is the ultimate feel-good fragrance for times when the changeable weather ensures that you are always dressed wrong.

When, in the exuberance of spring expectation, you have thrown on the nice, light jacket and, after much hesitation, even decided on a light scarf, although all the winter clothes should already go into the closet. When you enter the street dressed like this, the rain clouds rushing along in the wind quickly shield you from the sun. It begins to rain, at the much too thin jacket all zippers and buttons are closed, which one can find and the scarf is wrapped so often and so high around the neck that one remains almost the air away.

If one should not have run now yet too far from home, one turns around, in order to put on nevertheless still cap, gloves and the thick winter jacket. Or one has luck and finds a shop, into which one can disappear times fast and with the rummage stands then there a bottle of the brown, warmth promising Maison Margiela smell.
Spray it on and your nose tells you: come in, sit down, warm up, look around, calm down. The sun and warmth will be right back. Rejoice in the light clothes you've been missing now.

This is exactly how I discovered this fragrance a few years ago. And after several years of using the scent frequently, I have to say that was probably the perfect moment to meet it for the first time.

My strongest association when smelling it is - as already mentioned in some comments - clearly coconut and that also right at the beginning. In fact, I also recognize a short time the slight sour notes at the beginning, but only on the skin (not on the test strip) and also really only briefly. Therefore, I would actually not characterize the fragrance as citrusy in any way. To me, the scent is woody-sweet. He actually tends strongly in the gourmand direction, to cross the border to a real gourmand, however, he lacks any fruit component on the one hand and has it on the other hand too much wood and synthetic-aldehyde aspects.

How the coconut character comes about is still not entirely clear to me. I think, however, that it is ultimately the mixture of the woody and sweet character.

Interesting is: We have it here in this aspect to do with a particularly beautiful example of an abstract fragrance representation. Because if you smell coconut milk or coconut shavings once and then at the Jazz Club, you realize that it is just a pure abstraction. The smell of the real ingredients of coconut is actually very different, less smoky, less aldehydic. For those interested in coconut fragrances, I would like to recommend a sample of Jazz Club. Perhaps a way to discover the fragrance differently.

In fact, the perception span for the wearer with two hours rather short. However, he withdraws just as already described in the other reviews to the near environment. And in doing so, he becomes anything but unpleasant. I find Jazz Club to be one of those fragrances that retreats to a heavenly base that is still perceptible for a few days. When I first tested it, it was the scent strip that I carried around with me even after two days, sipping a quick "smelling sip" of the pleasant deep sweetness every now and then. In the base, I perceive great similarity to the fragrance "Megalium" by Carner (even if the "superstructure" of the two fragrances is very different! - Not a fragrance twin!). I suspect that Styrax is a big contributor here.

Here now my second review of the total of three fragrances from the Brazilian cosmetics market leader Natura. About the brand I have already written in my first Renzension to "Hümor a Dois" and can therefore come straight to "Urbano Noite" and my first encounter with him.

The first thing I want to talk about, for once, is the packaging and the bottle. The bottle is an absolute eye-catcher for me. However, not because of its perfection or beauty, but precisely because of its imperfection:

At first glance of the printed bottle, I immediately stopped, because something disturbed my greedy but flowing gaze, which perhaps many of you also know when facing a sea of unknown perfumes and first trying to establish any visual orientation. So I immediately looked at the bottle more intently, turning it. What is that on there? An eye? A mask? Where is the front anyway, where is the back? Ah, I see, the eye is supposed to show through. But then it's half above the writing. No, that's not an eye Okay, the sprayer goes there, so it must be in the front. It doesn't rotate. Yeah, that makes sense. But then this is a faulty bottle. The pressure on the wrong side...

Anyway, enough of that, I said to myself. I want to smell the perfume after all, not find out if there's a flaw in the bottle here.

Compared to the bottle, the fragrance is easier to grasp:

At the beginning opened a strong, dense mixture of familiar Fougère upbeat (citrus-aggressive lavender) and a sharp sweetness initially not yet definable. As a smeller also interested in niches and perfume art, I was inclined to dismiss the fragrance as a typical 0-8-15 fashion smell for the young man, which will soon be gone, although it never disappears, because immediately at least two similar come after.

I stayed on, though, and that's where the confusing bottle may have even played a good part...

After a short time, the fougère thicket cleared and a note remained that reminded me strongly of cola. A really strong, urtypische Coca-Cola with real sugar, where you already guessed when drinking how sticky and thick-brown the mass will be, which would remain when boiled out. I suspect this impression comes from the combination of orange peel and pepper notes built on a woody, milky sandalwood tonka base. Normally you need cinnamon bark for a good cola, don't you? That seems to be missing here. But it is excellently replaced by the pepper notes and thus reduced to its sharpness.

Even after a few rounds in the store, I came back to the scent:

The scent became lighter and lighter, but also more and more delicious. In the end, I was left with such a subtle sweetness that I decided I definitely had to pack this scent. I left the store with a package on which I could now also solve the mystery of the print on the bottle. It really was an eye. An eye from a face or a mask. I took another sniff on the back of my hand, smelled the sharp, fiery, citrusy sweetness, and was motivated for the night on the town.

P.S. I later learned that both the fragrance composition and the bottle design allude to northeastern Brazil and the Mata Atlantica. This rainforest is far less known than the Amazon, but has an enormously high species richness (higher than in the Amazon), although after already in colonial times heavy destruction only remaining areas. In the fragrance, the Mata Atlantica is reflected in particular by the subtle pepper notes, which allude to a type of pepper native to the region. The drawing on the packaging and bottle are inspired by the "Literatura de Cordel" (cord literature). This form of simple folk literature was often offered at the beginning of the 17th century in the northeast of Brazil at small stalls and hung on strings. The booklets also contained many drawings in a similar style to those on the Urbano Noite wrapper.

Hümor a dois is one of the freshest and tangiest fragrances from the house Natura. Since the brand is quite unknown in Germany perhaps briefly to the info: "Natura" is next to for example "o Boticario" one of the big fragrance and cosmetics brands in Brazil. In their boutiques you can find not only soaps and all kinds of creams, but also a very considerable selection of perfumes, and new ones are added quite frequently. As far as I know, many of the fragrances are created with Symrise through their branch near Sao Paulo. At the moment, I actually seem to be the only one in the entire Parfumo world who owns this fragrance. However, I have discovered in the past year also in Paris a first Natura-Boutik and should it go on so it is perhaps only a matter of time until also with a few other Parfumos the one or other fragrance lands.

On my Brazil trip I have of course very much in all possible Parfumerien herumgetrieben. It is already a challenge in this exuberant offer (perfumes and fragrant products enjoy in Brazil generally quite a high value in everyday life) to find a first orientation. Very much did not correspond to my taste. For my nose it was mostly too shrill, too emphatically young.
Hümor a dois was but one of the three candidates of Natura, which have made it in a bottle in my suitcase back to Germany.

Now let's talk about the fragrance:
Hümor a dois makes for me its name already in the prelude first of all all honor. It is a funny fragrance. For me, the first impression exudes a sparkling, light humor. Not humor with too much depth, but light and fast. It then develops into a fairly classic fougere with that certain sweet waft on an herbaceous/woody base. However, as already described, this is accompanied by a distinct acidity that gives the fragrance a nice effervescence. As a similar fragrance would come to mind me most likely Fierce of Abercombie and Fitch.

The tangy acidity also remains with the fragrance for quite a while before it then retreats to a fairly faint woody actually reminiscent of oak moss base. At this stage, however, the fragrance is only very faintly perceptible. A rather short shelf life characterizes the fragrance. I deliberately do not want to speak of a shortcoming here, because a long extended shelf life would not suit the fragrance either. The fragrance does not tell a long story, but gives a crisp, witty and easily digestible short story, therefore at the beginning also with a considerable sillage. With this fragrance you can not hide - at least in the first one or two hours.

Personally, I prefer to wear this fragrance on warm summer afternoons, when I run around after sports freshly showered in loose clothing still a little in the streets, perhaps a cool beer in hand. For this occasion, I find the fragrance perfect. Because it gives me a light feeling, lets me stroll with an interest here and there to hold a short chat about how pleasant the weather is and to say goodbye again quite quickly with a fleeting short laugh.