1805 Tonnerre BeauFort London
This is a little bit insane, because of all the notes I am getting just smoke - no blood, no booze and no amber - with a tiny tiny whiff of lime, mostly up top but really staying throughout. So this should be a no-brainer: although the smoke is a complex and attractive smoke, it's not particularly fragrant or incensey and doesn't need to be paid for at this rate.
And yet. And yet. I keep smelling it. I keep picking up the strip (which I sprayed last night and it's still there late morning) and sniffing my wrists (where I reapplied this morning). So, it's just smoke but it's somehow compelling smoke. There is something really sexy about it. Like a dark, sullen boy who leaves your bed in the middle of the night to walk the abandoned ruins, and you follow him because he's as much about adventure as about sex. Something redolent of wood but also metal, something that rasps in your throat but you grow to like it.
This could be absolutely magnificent if the smoke was toned down and the rest of the notes turned up a bit, but it's still strangely, strangely compelling.
Vi Et Armis BeauFort London
Love love love this.
I'm not sure if I really want to smell like this, but I certainly want to smell THIS SMELL, and I think I'd rather smell it on myself than on others. This probably doesn't make any sense. It's not perfume in the classic sense, but it certainly is a scent that I'd like to have around. I'm wearing it on my right wrist on its own and mixed up with Tonnere/1805 on the left one and it's astonishing stuff.
It's not as pure smoke and guns (with a sharp whiff of lime now and then) as 1805, although it still is predominantly smoke, but with added bitter tea (it is not, however, smoked tea, strangely enough, but good) note and something else, something between new paper and fresh tree bark. And booze - maybe rum, maybe sweet-barrel matured whisky.
It's OTT, it's weird, it reeks of adventure and stories and romance. OK, I'll risk saying it: this is something Jack Sparrow would wear. Layered with Shalimar.
Lignum Vitae BeauFort London
On paper it's pretty much a bitter lime. I don't like. On skin it's much more interesting, sweeter and warmer, more complex but I don't really like it enough to even "like" it here even though I don't dislike it. Oh, it's got a bit of the "Lush bathbomb accord" whatever the base they use is.
Fathom V BeauFort London
This is just so weird. Astonishing. The opening is unlike anything I've ever smelled as a fragrance before. I don't know if I get the earth notes. Perhaps there is juniper there, or some other spices but in a herbal not dried/spicy format.
The floral part is overwhelmingly lily, a green lily. Every thing is actually both very green and slightly rotten and salty too.
I keep smelling it through I'm not yet sure if I want to smell of it. But certainly interesting.
Later: No. I don't like it on me. Fairly linear and not much respite from that nearly-acrid green.
