Memoir Man by Amouage, 2010

With Bleu de Chanel I started to get intrigued by incense, now with Memoir Man I learned to appreciate it and to love it! Amouage does the most amazing incense you can come across, so if you like incense or want to smell high quality exclusive incense get this. Memoir Man is an impressive fragrance with an amazing depth to it. This is something I imagine Batman or James Bond would wear. Mysterious, elegant, dark, it leaves you intrigued the whole time while retaining its tamed character, it feels like a black panther just staring waiting to feed or be tamed and it depends on the wearer to conquer and dominate or to be swallowed by this beastly fragrance. Projection is very good and it lasts 12+ hours like a high quality niche fragrance should. You can pick up the dark herbal notes all the way perfectly blended with woods and of course the main aura you'll get is from the tobacco and the amazing incense. This won't really develop much but the whole theme is just phenomenal and endless, i'm really speechless with this scent. Overall Memoir Man needs a man with character, not afraid to wear something different and ready to unleash this endless story. So... imagine yourself lost in a dark rainy forest staring at this magical creature, you are all alone and it depends just on you to come closer and to dominate, or to retreat and surrender.

When I bought Memoir Man the only information the SA could offer was Absinthe Frankincense Tobacco. It's possible I bought the first bottle on the planet as we had Memoir here a month or so before it was placed anywhere else - Amouage were using HK as a test market, I believe, so below is my 'first impressions' from late summer 2010. It has become a staple and possibly my favorite Amouage (along with Homage, which is a different thing altogether). Memoir Man opens with a moist slightly citric green haze, very fragrant and quite bracing. It took me three days to discern the mint in amongst all this. In that sense MM does bring to mind the opening of a handful of other serious high quality fougeres where there seems to be a bit of a scramble to quickly adjust the collar and tuck the shirt in before smiling at the person in front of you. This is a good sign IMO, because it usually heralds a serious composition, altho MM is not as obviously new-fougere like as Opus II, Dhofar, Invasion Barbare et al. Along with this quite unusual and captivating opening there is a sense of a moist tobacco leaf / herbal quality and an underlying ashy frankincense. In that sense I think the proposed three-note sketch given to the SA I spoke to is quite accurate. The green minty sparkle encompassing the absinthe, the moist bundle of tobacco leaf and certainly the frankincense are all present and accounted for. On a couple of occasions I have also picked up a glimpse of a Tribute note, which threw me a bit still does I keep looking for it. Then MM settles into a deep frankincense+ aura. I am no frankincense expert but I would suggest this leans more towards the rugged, outdoorsy ember like incense of Epic Man (and at a big stretch the ashiness of Serge Noire) than the more genteel cathedrals of Avignon and Encens Flamboyant and so on. Its not entirely dry to me there is always a sense of a bundle of fragrant moist leaves hovering above smouldering charcoal. And this is where I get lost, boys and girls, because much as I would like to wax poetic about the interplay of the leather, woods, tobacco, oakmoss and how the hint of lavender works earlier on I really perceive this as more of a mood or an atmosphere than a collection of easily discernable individual notes (this is why I dont review). So shifting gears somewhat, Ill put it out there that the quite poetic copy from Amouage quoted above is actually very, very apt. This is an autumnal, late afternoon soft golden light kind of scent to me, and if it is the memoir of a man who has traveled and perhaps seen more of the world (and himself) than some of us would care to, then my proposition would be that he did a lot of that traveling on foot. There is a gravitas to Memoir that I admire, its contemplative and there is an air of mystery about it. This is perfume for grown-ups. This is the first time for a couple of years I have worn a scent almost exclusively for a fortnight and it has given me pause to consider how I approach this whole game - it's just so easy to be dismissive and jump to conclusions based on a sample wearing. I understand that Man was developed first and then Memoir Woman, which works perfectly in the same way that Epic Woman alludes to Epic Man and then offers a more nuanced floral take on the original. There is coherence between the two, and I did briefly compare notes with Coconut on Memoir Woman perhaps she will post on it. The floral aspect is there, along with the underlying herbal / leathery tones, and tuberose is apparent to me but in the context of the overall composition, not as a one liner. I would rate this as more overtly floral than Epic Woman, but no less intriguing. They make a wonderful pair, just like the Lyric and Epic duos IMO. I am sure fans of Epic, Dia and Tribute will enjoy Memoir. Personally I think I like it more than any of them, although it has pointed me back to Epic Man, a scent I may have passed by a little quickly in favour of its sister.