Follow (2016)
by Kerosene

Bought a decant of this recently, and thought I'd share my thoughts..

I don't normally gravitate to blind buying coffee frags anymore for 2 reasons. 1, they all tend to smell the same. There's pretty much only 2 ways that coffee can be done in frags (until trying this) - 1 dry, like the coffee bean in raw form, or 2, creamy, sweet, and more like a Starbucks Frappuccino, focusing on the sweet vanilla and tonka notes than coffee itself. The 2nd reason is that fragrances with coffee listed in the notes, 70% of the time, I won't even smell coffee at all, or it's there and gone before I can even notice it.

Now moving along, Follow is a rare breed and it follows none of the above stereotypes that I am used to with coffee notes. I mean, it actually smells like coffee, and the coffee note lasts a good while. It's taking my perception of what I thought was a money grab house, built up from Youtube hype into a legitimate niche brand.

The fragrance itself.. it opens with a strong, dark roasted coffee note. I do mean strong, 1 spray from a sample decant, and it projects like a monster. I suppose the note is similar to that in Pure Coffee, but to me, Pure Coffee smells more like pure patchouli, Follow actually smells like the initial first minute of Pure Coffee, where it really smells like coffee. Where Pure Coffee becomes a patchouli bomb, Follow turns into a woody scent, although the woods smell synthetic to me. Synthetic woods notes tend to smell peppery to me, and that's what I get here, but since the coffee note is so strong and robust, it balances out the woods. There is some sharpness at this stage in the middle of the fragrance. The base becomes a bit sweeter with tonka.

Lastly, it's one of the few coffee frags that I wouldn't call gourmand, it's not foody, it doesn't remind me of breakfast, or desserts. It reminds me of what I would imagine picking coffee beans in the Colombian country side is like, although I have never been there, that is the image I get. Coffee is in the air, a gust of wind and on a rainy day.