Mémoire d'Homme (2002)
by Nina Ricci

After outstanding releases such as Phileas, 1975 Fifi award winning
Farouche, Nina and a bunch of others, Memoire D'Homme stands in the house range as one of the most disappointing. Calone galore...sorry I've to pass on this one.

15th August, 2011.

Not a fan. Many compare this to my favorite scent, Terre d'Hermes but I really don't see much of the comparison... On my skin, this is all about licorice, nutmeg and cedar after the initial grapefruit top note. The cedar being the main similarity between the two scents to me. The grapefruit top note here is nice, but it lasts for just a few seconds and is gone, leaving just the licorice behind; transitioning to the nutmeg and cedar notes. I own both Memoir and Terre, but I regret my blind buy of this one.

23rd July, 2011.

Typical male woody scent somewhat dry. Linear, a bit boring. If you apply too much it becomes dense incense-y mess.

21st June, 2011. (Last Edited: 15th January, 2012.)

This smells like a case of miscalculated dosage. After a nice enough grapefruit and lemon opening, Mémoire d’Homme lets loose with a staggering blast of Calone, which effectively blots out all other content. The ingredients that surface briefly for air suggest there might be a pleasant spicy citrus chypre somewhere deep beneath the raging cucumber aquatic tide, but I can hardly find it. In the end it’s just plain nasty.

10th January, 2011.

Whoa, this one is different indeed. The opening to my nose is some sort of spicy citrus concoction, it's different, and very warm.. so warm it actually heats up the skin; it smells a little like the broth from minestrone soup as well. As if the opening weren't strange enough already, the middle takes a turn for the I'm not sure.. it starts to smell like asphalt, rubber and licorice. Once that mellows out, I get a very smokey incense and rubber mostly. After having endured the most interesting part of the fragrance, it suddenly becomes a bit sweet, vanilla or possibly tonka bean, and slightly powdery. The base then invokes some woods, I definitely get the cedar here.

Overall it makes for an interesting fragrance that takes the niche risk to the max. If ya like scents like Fahrenheit, or even Narcisco Rodriguez, you may wanna give this one a try. It's pretty different, and a hit or miss more or less. Love it or hate it, honestly, I haven't made my mind up. But, I surely appreciate it.

10th January, 2011.

GAG, I really hate this.
A super-synthetic aquatic ginger scent ...perhaps perfect for the all-smiles, life-lover type, who finds 'magic' and 'beauty' in all things insipid and mundane.

17th June, 2010.