First post, second full wear of this classic. A perfect scent after a hot shower and shave. It definitely delivers that clean sharp out of the barbershop vibe, freshly shaven masculine aura and tone. Received a compliment out running errands too actually. Drawback, projection/longevity. Maybe 20-30 min reach out of the gate then just a couple hours on skin thereafter, at least on me. The base notes give it a nice distinctive touch compared to other fougere style frags I have which is nice though. A very earthy fougere is what I would call this. Been around for a long while, still being produced so that also says something, and easily an everyday versatile wear especially if you want to change scents mid day with no clashing of scents. Smell great brothers. Have the best blessed day.

Today I decided to give my sapphire collection by BTV a spin again. I had tried them when I first got them and then both our own @Justin Tillery and @Jonathan Ventura tried this set after me. Truth be told I wasn’t very excited about them as I found them all harsh and synthetic. Performance was beast as expected. But the scent profile was offensive. Fast forward 8ish months and I decided to come back to them. It’s actually much better than I remember and smooth now. Still beast mode but though. This frustrates me as for what BTV charges the frags should be aged to perfection no matter what size you purchase. Let’s face facts here. None of BTV contain real oud and anyone that tells you they can smell oud don’t know frags or oud at all. They are smelling a chemical woody derivative that in know way can compare to the intricacies of oud distilled in various countries and ways. Whether steel or copper pot distillation matters nothing. Every batch of Oud that’s distilled is completely different and there is zero chance of frag consistency between batches. But I’m getting on my high horse about actual Oud vs synthetic derivations of certain notes. Bottom line here is this is MUCH better now. FBW? At this price point imho? No. But and this is a big but, I’m not upset at purchasing the sapphire set currently. 😂 now I have to go through them all again to see if this trend continues with the other three…. What say you fam????