Baccarat Rouge 540 (2014)
by Maison Francis Kurkdjian for Baccarat

This is on my Mt. Rushmore. I'll admit it's a bit sweeter than I typically lean, but just the same, it's performance and attraction are undeniable.

The most delicious pair of rubber gloves you ever smelled.

It stands out. Leans feminine.

I first smelled Baccarat Rouge on paper and got a huge glug of that candy floss and burnt sugar chemical so beloved of celebuscents and something that shouted BERRY in a vocodered voice. So far so like the ultra-sweet gourmands that many young women wear these days that will choke any available stairwell or elevator, but this one seemed buffed to a sheen, and a blotter with a single spray seemed to keep calling to me from the far end of the room. Not the kind of thing I normally go for but it seemed to hold promise. Could Kurkdjian have offered us something addictive and startling in this most trashy of genres?
But on skin, disaster could not be averted, for alongside the sweetie cloud there was a pervasive iodine and ozone hospital corridor smell and a sharp metallic clang that put my teeth on edge. Here it seems was the woody amber from hell, hell-bent on giving aromachemicals a bad name. I think it is aiming for some kind of dense yet transparent trick but ends up as widescreen soup with bits in it that you wish rather weren’t. Pretty linear and stretches from here to eternity.

I can't believe I am writing a review for this stuff, given how much I hated this when I first tried it. I am no lover or liker of sweet scents, so my initial reaction is unsurprising.

This is really were perfumery breaks the boundaries of harvesting fragrance from flowers or extracting essences from natural sources. Baccarat Rouge 540 is pure and simple synthetic from top to bottom.

There is no development here. The scent is literally a very sweet candy floss note (caramelised brown sugar) with ambrox.

So why am I reviewing this scent? The answer is a very firm "I have no idea!". What I do know is that I just keep coming back to it. I still don't like the sweetness, but it is addictive and if it keeps saying to your mind "come back and smell me" it has to be a good thing.

I am holding back giving it top marks though as it has to be said that there is nothing natural about this. The marketing blurb suggests a note of saffron, but I simply detect a highly sweetened strawberry-like note. That's not saffron. It's a bit like how you get strawberry-flavoured yoghurts, which might well be pleasant, but taste nothing like strawberry, yet you keep wanting more.

That said and not being an oud fan, this is clearly one of the brand's better creations to my nose. Is it worth the asking price? I'll let you be the judge of that.

Do not allow yourselves to be tricked
By this notoriously excellent and highly unorthodox fragrance
That's pretending to be something else.

Second opinion:

Somebody mixed up
Earth, air, fire and water in
The wrong proportions.

Third opinion:

I refuse to buy
Stolen information, this
Tire fire in heaven.

Fourth opinion:

Olfactive psy-op
To make us sympathize with
Burning museums.

Fifth opinion:

Divine trickery
Mixing up good and evil
In new-fangled ways.

Sixth opinion:

We may not need whales or oceans any longer for the sake of perfumery, but this fragrance shows that we owe them both a debt of eternal gratitude.

Seventh opinion:

Repeat after me:
Radical abundance is
Gonna be some fun.