Fragrance Reviews by silverdog

This is excellent. Refined, clever, slightly strange but so, so wearable.

It's dusty, musky citrus filtered through the mulch of hedgerows and laced with shitake mushrooms. Superb, Japanese elegance, like yesterday's Comme des Garcons shirt, left outside overnight.

Or maybe like a big, cuddly Panda supplemented its usual diet of bamboo shoots with a cup of good quality tea and a nice, ripe grapefruit - and then burped. Or maybe not.

I have to agree with a previous reviewer... After a couple of hours, the base of green, sappy wood - bamboo, I suppose - with some dusty, fruity florals hanging on in there, is really, really good.

But the shrill opening, like an animated, brightly coloured confectionery counter, commandeered by some frightening ninja lychees and a samurai watermelon, attacking your olfactory organ with lots of sharp little citrus swords and badly-aimed berry nunchucks, is enjoyably strange but not particularly pleasant.

What I love about this fragrance is that 'they' wouldn't dare launch it today. It's deep, dark and visceral and very 80s - a total 'power fragrance'.

Like a Halston trouser suit on a butchered veal calf or an abortion in Don Johnson's spice rack, this is a scent of its time, its sleeves rolled up and its fingers on Reagan's Star Wars buttons. A whiplash in a pine forest, a cheap cigar in a plastic ashtray. Yum.

They don't make 'em like this anymore.

I discovered this incomparable elixir of pure sex when my friend told Tania Sanchez how he was saving up to buy Cuir de Russie in a brief Facebook exchange. She responded with just six words: "Good but get Knize Ten instead."

So we tracked it down (to a great online retailer - manufactum.com). And now it's leapfrogged Santa Maria Novella's Nostalgia and Bulgari Black to become my all time favourite.

It's bright, powdery and soapy at first and then deep, dirty and deliciously animalic on the drydown. Complex and very classy.

I love to imagine Marlene Dietrich wearing it at the height of he powers, swanning around the less salubrious bars of LA looking for wanton sapphic pleasure in a tuxedo, wishing she was back in Berlin or Vienna.

Goodness! See what it can do...?!

A full fat liquorice milkshake... To me, it shares the cloying sweetness of Gaultier 2. Cheap and synthetic.

Not bad, but it would be so much better if it did have some real earthiness. The subtle, dusty floral notes are good but the citrus and pepper are far too sharp and shrill, and there doesn't seem to be enough wood to balance it all out. I guess I wanted it to be a bit deeper and dirtier.

Clean and fresh without soapiness, bright and citrusy with no sharp edges.

ck One with the volume turned up.

Just what you'd expect from Comme des Garcons, really, but without the overt complexity.

The lively, musty top notes are gone in an instant and you're left with a pretty straightforward sour, dry, synthetic wood. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. There's a warmth and a vague spiciness but I just can't locate any particular notes.

A stale slice of mahogany Christmas cake, anyone?

Sweet, dirty metal. Like gummi bears, TCP and the rusty nails in an old packing crate at the far reaches of an unexplored, dusty attic. Fabulous.

Unquestionably one of Demeter's very best. Unlike the rest of my fragrances, I keep my Demeter collection in the toilet. I love it when visitors emerge exclaiming that they've been transported by the smell of Thunderstorm or laughing that they've covered the smell of flatulence by turning my WC into a Funeral Parlour. But Gingerale is one of the few Demeter scents that's allowed a place in my fragrance 'wardrobe'.

It's undoubtedly a faithful recreation of one of my favourite mixers but it's also completely wearable. It fizzes off your skin and into your nose; it's sweet and dry in all the right places; it zings with citrus and then settles into a wonderful spicy dryness. Mmmm.

And like a naughty friend, it actively encourages me to drink whisky.

Amazing stuff! Like a rough kiss from a sweaty, unshaven mechanic whilst being pushed up against a pile of old tyres... *sigh*

Actually, the 'pit-stop' opening dissipates rather speedily and you're left with a dry, subtle, synthetic leather and wood drydown that's eminently wearable.

'Nostalgia' clearly refers to classic cars and it commemorates some famous race or other. I'm afraid I was a little distracted by the scent and scrabbling for my credit card as the lovely lady at the Santa Maria Novella Pharmacy in Florence told me the story.

The wooden bottle cap is totally hideous but this is a beautifully clever fragrance. One of my all time favourites.