Anice (2004)
by Etro

I feel compelled to write a review for this one after having read the existing reviews. IMO even the positive ones do it wrong. Yes, it is called "Aniseed". Yes. the first seconds of application are consumed by an ouzo blast. But from then on it is a whole different story. The salty sweetness of liquorice comes in only to pave the road for a delicate green an floral accord which anchors to the skin with a hint of white musk. By the end of the journey all that is left to remind the aniseed is a cool salty feel that complements the florals making them less feminine and more etherial. Ultimately this is an excellent cool summer skin scent without any ozonic hint which is good and rare.

A clever scent that manages to carry you on a relatively straight line across a range of anise scents. So you get a bit longevity of the anise theme through a clever use of ingredients. The opening is, unsurprisingly, reminiscent of ouzo or sambuca (what do you expect when anise smells are being carried by a lot of alcohol?).

The problem is that it's not clear who would want to smell like this.

Unlike the Yohji Yamomoto smell where licorice is used to bring together other scents, this is just licorice.

Pretty much what it says on the bottle. The opening is anise and salty black licorice, which cycle slowly toward a more herbaceous, bittersweet, yet still recognizably anisic accord in the heart. From there it’s pretty linear and uncomplicated, if not terribly potent or long-lasting.

I’m not entirely sure what to make of this stuff. I think it does a better job than either Caron’s Eau de Réglisse or Hermès’s Brin de Réglisse, but I don’t find it all that wearable. In the end, it’s not merely a gourmand – it’s a food flavor. More of a curiosity than a perfume, if you ask me.

A bag of black Twizzlers and all that. Anice alone in my opinion is a disgustingly harsh and raucous smell. Yup, it's anice and I don't like it.

I wish I could be more eloquent in my reivew but my thoughts were the same as the other reviewers. Etro Anice smells exactly like Good-n-Plenty's liquorice jelly bean candy. It is revolting and I had to scrub it off immediately. I just have to ask: who on earth wants to smell like this???

Here are thenotes, per The Perfumed Court: anise, bergamot, rosewood, jasmine, fennel, caraway, iris, vanilla, musk and amber.

An explosion of anise opens the fragrance and I’m immediately tempted to wash it off – too much like ouzo. But the excesses of the opening immediately dissipate into a rather straightforward but now nonthreatening anise note. And that’s the whole story. This is not a very complex scent: It is simply…anise. It’s a gourmand that smells like licorice. It moves very quickly from the opening explosion to a discreet skin scent, spending very little time as a sillage producer. Etro’s Anice is an ok scent. Personally, I neither like nor dislike the smell of anise or licorice, and that’s pretty much my feeling about this scent. I must say, though, that I don’t get the usual Etro synthetic sub-vibrations from this one.