Escentric 02 (2008)
by Escentric Molecules

Ambroxan and the orris notes made for an even more minimalistic version of the newer DKNY Men. Just add calone to this and you get DKNY Men. I rather like this but it feels less of a scent and more of an exploration of a single note. Decent sillage, actually and leaves a small cloud around you if you will. Most modern perfumes are aromachemical but Escentric just takes the small stuff and charges 2x as much.

Strong and chilly. A pleasant, peppery, woody scent, giving the overall impression of traditional masculine (but non-citrus) colognes.

As I catch a whiff now and then, I forget it is my own sillage and half expect to bump into a guy in a too-tight button-down shirt who likes my smile and wants to buy me drink.

Escentric 02 is, simply, Molecule 02 (or ambroxan) with vetiver, muscone, orris and elderflower thrown into the mix.

It'd be much cheaper to purchase some ambroxan, from a perfume supplier, and then layer it with a vetiver fragrance of your choice.

All the offerings from this house are a joke...

Apparently I don’t smell as much of this one as others do especially in the opening. I get a too-subtle woody cedar note and a ghost of a biting vetiver. There may or may not be a floral in there, but I couldn’t swear to it either way. It just doesn’t come through very strongly to me at first, but what I get, I rather enjoy. It’s an unusual scent to my nose… primarily cedary, but with a slightly alien tinge to it. Some say it smells like gin and tonic, and I think that, while the vetiver could pass for tonic, the cedar smells quite a bit like cedar and not very much like juniper. Once I recognize the cedar note as primary, it becomes tenacious, and it dominates for the rest of the time the fragrance lasts. Escentric 02 has a strange kind of sillage: a sort of “now you smell it, now you don’t…” off and on sillage that lasts for a few hours... it has good longevity. As pleasant as the fragrance is, I find it more of a curiosity than a potential purchase. But I will admit that it is an urbane and interesting – intriguing even – fragrance.

Way too weak to me! Not unpleasant -but either is Old Spice. I can't see sampling any of the other "Molecules" after this one.

The Escentric Molecules line has been responsible for one of the most exciting perfumes I've ever smelled (Escentric 01's smoky lime/pepper/cedar rush) and also one of the most frustrating (Molecule 01's faint, disappearing cedar water on skin).


So, with eyes (and nose) wide open, I tried Escentric 02 which struck me as being very similar to Escentric 01 but without the lime or pepper, or stellar longevity. Escentric 02 definitely has a generous helping of ISO E Super- its cedary, woody notes are pronounced- but its real mission is apparently to showcase the synthetic molecule called Ambroxan. According to my internet research, Ambroxan is meant to smell like ambergris which is "a waxy substance occasionally produced in the large intestine of sperm whales". It'd be interesting to know who figured out that ambergris could be of such use in perfumery!

Anyways, to me, 02 has pronounced cedar/wood notes but it also has blended non-specific floral notes, which veer into a little musky/powderiness. It is one of the harder fragrances I've ever had to describe because it does not smell like anything I've ever smelled before, other than its cousin Escentric 01. In closing, thumbs up to Escentric 02 for being quirky, original and (thankfully) non-sweet with decent longevity.

Here are the notes, courtesy of Luckyscent: Ambroxan, vetiver, muscone, orris, elderflower.