Let's explore Lubin.

Not on my radar, although I would love to know more...except that my budget is already quite strained by the more well-known houses.

I only know of Idole & Cuir de Russie, though obviously I've never sampled them.

Aren't they expensive?

The only one i tried and had was Idole
idole i would describe it is like a scent of coca cola
kind of a scent and it's very sweet at the opening
and it gets a little woodsy with the Oud Drydown
but it's nothing i ever smelled before in a cologne
it's different.

I recently bought a bottle of "Idole" - my husband and I are using it together and we both love the fragrance which has a wonderful saffron top-note and is another take at the saffron theme explored by Giacombetti in "Safron troublant" for L'Artisan Parfumeur." "Eau Neuve" is a wonderfully fresh "Eau" in the classic manner, the latest Lubin (sorry, the name escapes me at the moment) has a peppery start and is too biting for me. Too stupid I can't think of the name... but it was released this fall.

Oh, bboy! I get excited about this affordable house.

I love Itasca most of their new offerings, though I love a good bit of pepper in a fragrance. Woody, spicy, sexy! I cannot stop smelling this stuff! This one is fantastic.

My BF adores Idole, which I also admire but find a bit too "woody" to wear personally. Boozy is the word that most comes to mind.

Gin Fizz is a favorite, and my next purchase, a truly-exciting, bouncy fresh chypre with a bit of 'history' to it.

Bluff is maybe my favorite 'masculine' offering. A little like other dry, cedar-y modern 'gentle' woods (I am thinking of Memoir Man and Commes de Garcons original.), but with this unreal smoky note -- not overkill campfire stuff like Lonestar Memories -- just this warm, haunting fire-cracker-cordite silver 'smoke'.

L de Lubin makes me a little sad, as I have a bottle of vintage, which, despite starting off very citrusy, eventually envelops me in a cloud of good, clean, redolent 'soap'. The new stuff is simply 'thin'. No more fatty aldehydes, I presume.

Nuit de Longchamp is a gross-out for me; I know some lik love it, but the combo of spiciness and that heavy synthetic-animalic accord I am smelling everywhere makes my stomach do a little flop. I think of scents like Biehls eo02 in this vein, and this one seems really shotty. ( I once had a sample ot f the vintage, but it was so turned I could get little more than that it was a L'Heure Bleue-like Orienta...l once upon a time.)

Inedite is a lovely, aldehydic feminine in that neuvelle, ultra-ladylike, powder-and-rose way. Citizen Queen comes to mind, but Inedite feels more 'pure-of-heart' in it's retro intentions. It's also reminiscwnt of Jovoy's Poudre. I love it, but I am just not a 'girly gir'l enough to pull it off.

Figaro struck me as nice -- if a bit figgy, when I sniffed it at Harrods, but I did not get a sample. I think I was overloaded, but I'd like to revisit it. It recalled a rather obscure one (but some of you might know it), Acqua di Biella's Bursch.

The others I do not know. But on the whole, I think it's a really good house.

As with Hillaire, I have experience with the vintage "L". Lots of experiences, plural. It was one of my signature scents during a very actively romantic spell in my life. Well enough about that and on to the scent itself. The vintage had much more depth, but what didn't? Things were real in those days. The vintage started out tangy and then multi-layered itself through the soapy phase Hillaire describes and then after many twists and turns bit its own tail in the drydown with a citrus and musk more evolved than but redolent of the top notes. The eau de toilette and edp were good and strong; the pure parfum was like a hallucinogen.

Nuit de Longchamps I never wore in the vintage, but I have a 50ml of the reconfiguration. It's seriously femme stuff.

I had a small amount of the original Gin Fizz and adored it. It gave me a lifelong love of the scent of quinine. Haven't smelled the new.

I wore Eau Neuve in the original - loved it so much I could have bathed in it twice a day. The reformulation is decent, but lacks a certain tension between the powdery and the sharp that the original had. The original Eau Fraiche by Leonard had that contrast too - wonder what became of that scent.

I have not worn or tried any of the new extrapolations/collections, but Lubin is one house that I feel optimistic about - that's not something you hear me saying a lot these days.