Fragrance Reviews by charlie.gund

Griff calls the overwhelming mandarin "metallic"; I'd say it's more blunt and fuzzy, like a skein of polyester yarn wrapped carefully around a ball-peen hammer. The carnation is squashed to a sad pink pulp (some of its clove seeps out, however, in the squashing). The rich or ancient leather-or-wood notes that others have found I can only discover after hours, long polyester-hammer hours, sitting very close to my skin, almost as though it were a postcard sent from the gift shop of the antique sawmill Quarry so beautifully describes. "I wish I were there, too," I say sadly to Quarry; but my nose will not take me there.

This is a good fragrance to have on hand if, for instance, you are staying in Paris in the winter in an apartment with no hot water, where you consequently bathe perhaps not as often as you might like to. Piver's Cuir de Russie is so powerful, so straightforward, and so absurdly durable that you will never walk out of the house feeling unkempt. Not fascinating, perhaps, but certainly presentable.

I urge all those who smell a rich old lady to give Youth Dew another chance, with more careful attention. She may be rich, this lady, she may be old (she wasn't always), but she is wiser than you know. The initial shower of assorted spices suggests that she may possibly be benign, even kindly; then, the clove and rose recall the grand passions of her youth; finally--you must pay close attention--the benzoin drifts up from beneath her polished manners like a prophecy (tricky to interpret, undoutedly true). Among my favorites.