Aod
by Lostmarc'h

Strictly by chance this sample ended up on my wrist and if not for the printed fragrance notes, I'd never be able to deconstruct Aod! It is supremely blended and completely fresh as the seaside. It has a soapy character very similar to "E" by Princess Jelisaveta Karadjordjevic - whose perfume creation was assisted by Sophia Grojsman. A unique and wearable take on gardenia! Lian & bbBD have eloquently captured the personality of this scent. I highly recommend sampling this beautiful blend.

I received a sample of this as an unexpected freebie, and I sprayed some on my hand on the way out the door. Within 30 minutes I forgot what I had applied, but I knew I liked the fragrance, and that it smelled familiar. When I get home I saw the sample, remembering what it was and re-applied for more complete testing.

Aod has absolutely no relation to "Aoud'' (lest anyone be confused). It starts as a lightly sweetened gardenia fragrance with a touch of citrus accompanying the gardenia. The sweetness is vanillic and I sense coconut (?). It starts close to the skin, but actually intensifies in it's heart, at which point the gardenia becomes more prominent. The drydown is just a fading of the gardenia and a lighter, musky vanilla accord. As with Losmarc'h's Lann Ael, it may stay close to the skin but it will last a long time. Lack of sillage is not a lack of quality with Losmarc'h.

The closest point of reference for this fragrance is Profumum Volo AZ 686, another Gardenia/Coconut fragrance, but the Volo AZ is about 1000x louder than Aod.

Great for gardenia fans....and there's nothing wrong with this fragrance (it's just not my thing).

Right let's get some comments on this.

Official blurb from First in Fragrance

Catch a whiff of the sea breeze, the snap of your towel in the wind. Recall the tang of the ocean, the scent of wet sand.
Head note of fresh grapefruit, floral core: gardenia, coconut, seashore aromas

My impression is that it's is clearly an aquatic and it's a nicely done one. I can tell it uses good quality ingredients and the scent in general feels more beach like and summerdays to me than some of the aquatics I have tried from Bond. It's not very synthetic but it's light, very fresh which is probably caused byt eh grapefruit with maybe a touch citrus in there. I didn't notice and coconut smell, it didn't smell like tan lotion at all and it seems that often coconut means tanlotion in the perfume world but this is not tan lotion territory. It's fresh cold water on a sunny day, very refreshing and blue. With a slice of lemon and grapefruit in there.

If you like aquatics give this one a go. I'm not an aquatic girl but I wouldn't hate it if it was given to me while I would hate others.