Yatagan (1976)
by Caron

I have both, vintage and new, and they are both very much like the hype--amazing, unique and formidable. I am a huge fan of Marcello's work and this is perhaps his best. That said, it took almost a whole year for me to give it a full wearing. I do not like vegetal scents and also do not like gourmand scents so the celery note was a worry. (I love celery, by the way...). Once the celery settles down and the heart notes are revealed, the fragrance takes on an amazingly masculine, outdoorsy musky funk that is anchored by hot pine and patchouli. Nothing to scare the horses, in the end--it actually wears close to the skin and is an amazing scent.

16th January, 2012.

Wow! How do I describe this sample from The Perfumed Court?
Initial impression: herbal, including basil & something else…
@ 5" in, I'm picking up another vegetal note- a clean celery (IFF's Vertofix?). No lavender yet, & no pine yet at least not of the resinous, evergreen, unless, just a whiff of dried, seasoned pine lumber.
@ 10" Perhaps there's also a hint of the celery morphing into wormwood or vetiver. I also get memories of Hugo Spirit with a touch of Ungaro pour L'Homme III. Is there an unlisted cumin or curry note?
@ 20" I'm picking up additonal notes that remind me of the scent of the bark on the Live Oak in my back yard
@ 30" the same
@ 60" no change
@ 2 hrs no change except projection fading
I don't get it- after multiple tests over several days, it's another nice Caron. What's there to say "Yuck" to?

1st January, 2012.

This is perhaps my favorite male fragrance. It's all about dry woods, aromatics, and muskiness. This is beautiful and timeless.

1st December, 2011.

This sword slices with the sharpness of pine, the masculinity of warn weather while it soothes with a woody/herbal bouquet. It is timeless and astounding. It wears very well as an outdoor scent as the notes blend in quite well to the natural aromas of the earth and the trees. This one is special. Please use this Yatagan with care, for it can cut quite deep.

29th November, 2011.

Yatagan, in its vintage, leathery, slightly barbershop and dirty combination of earth, bitter and mentholated herbs, astringent flowers, lavender and animal mould, conjures at me images of woody shacks of Canada or Wyoming with old oily lamps swinging outside or recovers memories about decrepit Buenos Aires's barbershops from the 70's or jumbled workshops of tailors or shoemakers placed in the old town. The smell could teleport you inside cellars of farm houses full of leather jackets and bronzy crockery. The juice is deep, sgorbutic and boisterous. The opening is mentholated, aromatic and pungent with a link of absinthe, citrus , lavender and aromatic herbs followed by conifers and resins. In this phase the smell is woodsy,  raw and moldy  as a basket of mushrooms. This is the rough beginning of the fragrance that follows stout althought the resinous mediation of the conifers tames a bit the prickly beginning and helps the descent towards the animal face of the juice. The fragrance starts soon sliding towards its leathery  and animalic foundation with a starring presence of galbanum, the roaring vetiver in support of a bold patchouli and  with the note of styrax  in its hard attempt to soften the amalgama. In effect the final outcome is too rough and too much to be worn in any occasion but this one will always be a fighter of the" fragrantic"fields.

30th October, 2011. (Last Edited: 22nd November, 2011.)

I am almost 99% certain that my sample was vintage because it came from the court and it is straight-up MONEY, son. We're talkin' SOLID GOLD! In fact, the quality of the smell alone just screams vintage.

Anyway, I've been messing around with this itty bitty sample for awhile now not really knowing what I was smelling. I also finished my sampled with a full wearing today and I tried my damnedest to analyze that divine odor that was emanating from my chest. Unfortunately the scent was a wildly evolving entity so it's hard to remember how I smelled this morning whilst still smelling myself now, but I'll try. In fact, most scents remain fairly similar throughout their development despite "pyramids" that the manufacturers often release, and this is quite a different animal.

It opens sweet, planty, and woody, with a hint of greasemonkey, and kind of resembles doing man-stuff in a forest. I suppose people don't usually chop wood while rebuilding an American V8 in the middle of the autumn foliage, but if you did it might just smell like the opening hour of Yatagan. By the end of the development, some eight hours later, Yatagan has morphed into the most wonderful leather with a hint of patchouli. In fact, it rather resembles Tom Ford's Tuscan Leather at this stage, but with the yayo turned down to an almost indecipherable whisper.

I need to find a store with a tester and see if the modern offering resembles the goodness that I have sampled today, though I somehow doubt it.

30th October, 2011.