Mr. Hulot's Holiday (2005)
by CB I Hate Perfume

I think the lesson from both the Demeter and the CB line is the connection between memory and scent. CB likes to take you back to childhood with his concoctions of Play Dough, waffles, and coastlines. Mr. Hulot's Holiday is very interesting. This is the East Coast in a bottle. I immediately got vivid images of the Atlantic Seaboard and a summer vacation I was on when I was four or five. In particular I could remember the deep blue sky of Miami and crossing waterways on short bridges. Powerful, but It's just not a scent I'd ever want to apply more than a few times. Much respect to Christopher; now make something all of us would love to wear 24/7/365.

Fragrance elements: marine, salty breeze, driftwood, rocks covered in seaweed, old leather suitcases.
Mr. Hulot’s Holiday – a charming French movie, full of wry observations of human nature and great physical comedy, all conveyed wordlessly. I guess this scent is an homage to the movie, but I too am not a fan of this family of scents. It is an airy, breezy, fresh scent. What I find in many scents of this family is certainly what I find here: a synthetic, detergent-like note that gets colder and more irritating as time goes on. This is an OK scent, but in my opinion nothing special. Its chief virtue is that it is somewhat less irritating than others. Don’t get any green seaweed, old wood, or leather notes here. Just fresh, fresh, fresh. My nose is getting weary of all the freshness.

Mr. Hulot¹s Holiday shares the very natural aquatic note with eternal return which i have enjoyed as well. A fresh salty aquatic but even at the first moment it carries the skin already in. I mean smells like a sea exposed skin more than sea itself. Barely a male skin. Richer than eternal return with a kind of sweetness and hint of old leather smell. It is not much sophisticated but i will accolade it in its simplicity.

If i'd walk blind in a room full of gentlemen to choose the sexy one, i would not take the habit rouge (old and tired director of the office) or yatagan (middle aged but not tired macho) but the mr hulot's holiday (the young student from the south shores who works as a lifeguard for summer). This would not be anyone else's (than lifeguard boy's) signature fragrance but any man would like to smell so simple and sexy sometime.

Of course we must take the skin chemistry into account. I can guess that this aquatic note is not so stable. But worths a try.

I love this fragrance. It reminds me of walks on the New England coast on cloudy days...salty, breezy, fresh, with hints of the nearby trees and grasses. I actually don't wear this but spray it around my rooms when I need to be taken away from the daily grind and transported to one of my favorite beaches.....it really works! This is a very uplifting fragrance.

To me, Mr. Hulot's Holiday is a pretty average aquatic. Salty, faint and fresh. There's supposed to be a little leather in it, but I don't get that. It has a certain sweetness though, it's not a fresh, cool blast of masculine ocean spray cologne, but a more mellow and pleasant scent. I'm just not friends with this entire scent family.