Another trip to the perfume counter, another four smells applied to skin. Actually, this time it was five, so look out for the bonus: - Hugo Boss The Scent Elixir - Tested the whole Boss The Scent line on the strngth of the free sample of The Scent Intense I recently tried and enjoyed. All of them were better than I anticipated, and this was the best of the bunch. Might pick up one of these in the fullness of time. - Creed Centaurus - Had to pop some Creed on. Plumped for Centaurus. Quite nice and spicy, a departure from the rest of the line. I like it, but I don't £300-pound-like-it. - YSL Y Iced Cologne - Stumbled upon this and had to try it. The ice accord is really cool, and the mint also works wonders early. The drydown is muted at first on me, but it mellows into a fizzy scent that I do like. I don't currently have anything from YSL, I should test the house and pick out something nice. - Clive Christian Strange Heavens Out of the Blue - Well blended and interesting "wandering scent", that goes from sweet to flowery to smoky withough cracking at the seams. It's nice... but it's not THAT nice. - Aaand finally, we hit Sunnamusk for the first time and sampled Golden Dust. Absolutely lovely. Smelt like Las Vegas, in a good way. I picked up a discovery set (6x1.2ml for a very creditable £14.95), and I'm popping back tomorrow to pick up the EDP, some perfume oil, and a candle. My wife and I got married in Vegas, and this scent definitely conjures up that memory. We also popped into Boots and saw some frankly great deals on discontinued stock and gift sets. Picked up the Polo set (10ml each of Red, Blue and 67) for £15, and a 75ml of the previous formulation of Acqua di Gio EDP for £40. My wife picked up 50ml of the discontinued Black Opium Extreme for £35. Outside of the fragrance space, I tried on a few watches. Overall, and fun and productive evening.

When I heard that the perfumer for my beloved Outlands, Cecile Zarokian, was also behind Creed’s Oud Zarian, I wanted to get my nose on it. Sniffed it off paper strip in a Bloomingdales —> loved it. Got a decant of it —> two test wears later, ordered a bottle. Today was my first full wear from my new bottle. There are definitely some similarities to Outlands — not necessarily that this smells like Outlands, but it absolutely reminds me of it, and certainly many of the notes and overall vibe that make me love Outlands make me love this one too. Honestly, my nose isn’t refined enough to pick out individual notes in something blended this well - what I can say is it’s just a deliciously warm rich spicy scent, with a hint of a refined non-stinky oud note (and no, I don’t care if it’s real Oud or not, let alone some alleged 80-year-old rare oud variety). Compared to Outlands, I’d say it is more elegant, doesn’t have some of the screechy edge that Outlands can have (which I think it might be from an incense note), and it’s certainly more linear — but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. There is a hint of a licorice note in here that I’m also enjoying – I think it goes well with the spice blend. I am shocked at how beastly the performance is. I applied nine hours ago and I am still getting whiffs of it - and for the first five hours this thing was radiating off of me like crazy. I’m not sure this is office safe, but at least compared to Outlands I’d say it is more versatile in terms of being more wearable by day or in warmer weather (I would not wear this in the heat of summer though). I’m absolutely happy with this purchase (only possible because it was at steep discount, of course) and to have this in my small collection. I know this offering got a lot of hate, but I’m really enjoying it. Cecile is batting 1000 in my book. It’s probably redundant versus my Outlands, but I love them both enough to make an exception and I think there are definitely different occasions where I can wear them. And I can still use Rayhan Terra to scratch the itch in between so that I don’t burn through those bottles.