Vetiver 46 (2006)
by Le Labo

I don't experience the radical development some have mentioned. Vetiver 46 starts out aromatic and a bit woody with a touch of what may be construed as smoke. It stays this way on me for the life of the scent.

Maybe my skin constrains this scent to remain linear; albeit I enjoyed the sample wearing. I cannot warrant buying a bottle...especially for the price, but it does smell good....and that's the idea isn't it?

It´s bloody marvelous! It keeps on changing on my skin and the stayingpower is great. One of the best Vetivers I own, together with Frederick Malles Vetiver Extraordinaire and Floris Vetiver. Big thumbs up!

Of the vetivers that I have tried to date, this one has the most radical development of all. What begins as a rather animalic vetiver eventually becomes sweet with a vanilla amber. The vanilla reminds me of the vanilla in Pi, but just a slight bit less sweet. All the while I get a touch of an animalic note in the background. I am not sure if I like how these notes clash.

So what do I think of Vetiver 46? I think it is interesting and I think it might smell great on someone else. For my personal use, I don’t really like the idea of a sweet vetiver, well, not this one at least. I might have liked it better if the development was more in line with the opening, but I am intrigued by what Vetiver 46 does.

I can't really pick out any vetiver in this concoction - it's not grassy or rooty or earthy like other vetiver scents. Instead, it's dry, astringent, aromatic, green and woody in a coniferous forest kind of way. It reminds me a little bit of Yatagan, though it's not quite as sharp and dry, not scorched brown herbs, but greener, perhaps even a little "cooler" and "wetter" but just a little. There is a certain sweetness in it which I associate with the natural sweetness of pine or fir. I also get what others are saying when they call it "smoky", though I don't perceive that hot, dry, acrid accord as smoke per se, more like some aromatic shrubs or weeds, lichen perhaps. I really, really enjoy it for its great, rugged, outdoorsy feel. My girlfriend immediately liked it too, she exclaimed that it smelled "fun" (!?)

Its a masculine vetiver, bracing--with notes of pepper and cedar, outdoorsy--with smoky vetiver, and fairly animalic like all of the Le Labo scents I have tried so far. The "plainness" of the vetiver is great. I don't like my vetiver converted into a sweet fragrance, but I prefer my vetivers to be softer. Great on a man, but not for me.

Smokey and woody, at first you'd think you've been had since there's no vetiver! It almost smells like buring woods and incense. The scent is rather relaxing to me. The vetiver appears after a few hows and it's a very subtle accord with the lingering incense. I prefer the more pointed or bracing vetivers like Vetiver Extraordinaire or Givenchy's but Vetiver 46 is not with out its charm.