Nostalgia (2002)
by Santa Maria Novella

This review is under revision.

OMG, I’ve smelled the top notes so often. It DOES smell like a garage—motor oil, hydraulic oil, an air compressor pumping out a stream of rubbery scented air. What an opening…this is better than a Demeter! After the heady garage & motor oil opening, Nostalgia turns into a synthetic leather scent, just as teflondog said—and I completely agree with the rest of his review, too: synthetic but excellent, inoffensive, too light, and I won’t be buying a bottle, either. It’s not my kind of thing for wearing so I guess I won’t be purchasing it, but it surely is an incredibly interesting scent. It’s a must sample.

At first, all I could think about was classic cars-- everything about them, tires, leather seats, and something else about cars and gas stations that I couldn't quite put my finger on exactly. Nostalgia is a perfect name for this mens' fragrance, I thought. Later, the development was hard to describe, because where this beauty ended up for me was......something like a moderately warm wood and rasberries! I don't get it exactly, but as the car smell and leather dissipated, that was my experience. My thought now is that I like it; I respect it; and I admire the creativity it took to make this, but I think it's just a bit too avant garde for me. Someday, maybe. I have to give it a positive review, ultimately, because it is so incredible and what is lacking is not in the product reviewed, but the reviewer, who doesn't fully understand the product. Wow!

This is an amazing fragrance. It really surprised me. I thought it would be similar to wearing gasoline and oil. It's not at all like that. It's extremely pleasant to wear. At first it's flowery a bit, with leather. Then it changes an hour later to more intense leather mixed with a touch of sweetness. It does make you reminisce about car from Rush's Red Barchetta, or something similar. This is truly, truly a gentleman's fragrance that oozes pure class. It's not really about automobiles at all to me, but I do get the references.. it's, to me, like a nice morning drive on country road, isolated.. that smell of air, woods, leather, a hint (slight) of oil, and thrill. The best word I can come up with to describe this scent is "THRILLING." It is to unique. It's a leather mixed with hint of floral. There is something sweet about it, VANILLIC.. I concur. This fragrance is totally wearable and modern. I could wear this to a workplace easily and guarantee no one would be offended by it. It's a useable fragrance that evokes a calm mood in me. From the leather to the vanilla, such a unique combination of stuff going on here. I am blown away by this scent. I don't know what else to say, other than sample it, wait some hours and then judge it. It's amazing.. my 2nd favorite SMN fragrance. Thumbs far up for this one.

Fun, fun, fun until daddy takes the T-bird away! Nostalgia does indeed start out smelling like new tires and auto fuel. I suspect that like Tubereuse Criminelle, there's a menthol or eucalyptus note creeping around here somewhere, and that it's responsible for some of the rubber/petroleum product vibe.

Once these top notes clear off, I'm left with a very clean and ever so slightly powdery leather accord that persits for about an hour or two. The drydown is much more conventional than the opening, dominated as it is by powdery musk and creamy woods.

Do I like it? Yes, I suppose so, but the top notes leave me expecting something much more novel and dramatic in the development - something that never quite occurs.

An interesting scent definitely worth a try, but with several letdowns: a bit too synthetic (my first impression was the nail polish remover my mother used when I was a kid); leaning on the feminine side; the gasoline/leather combo, the best part of this scent, vanishes in a matter of minutes; the tyre number has been done before, and better IMO (suffice to mention Tubereuse Criminelle), and the leather invokes vynil car seat sofas rather than genuine well-worn car leather.