So after church today, my friends and I are going to be doing a watch party for a new music video dropped from one of my favorite singers, Laufey, a jazz/modern pop artist. The video itself is a fairly big deal, and featuring a lot of famous faces like Hudson Williams and Alysa Liu, and because of that, we promised we wouldn’t watch it or even LISTEN TO THE SONG until we could all experience it together. Anyways to celebrate this special occasion, i decided to wear one of her personal favorite fragrances, which is Santal 33 from the Maison of Le Labo. This was the iconic, flagship breakout scent that helped this house gain traction and project their signature DNA onto the world, and my does it live up to the hype! It’s a unique, dry, slightly leathery take on australian sandalwood, with an almost dill, slightly ozonic undertones. To some people it smells slightly salty and almost pickle-like. To me it reminds me a bit of wet concrete during the rain. It has a strong, dry yet wet feeling notes of sandalwood, balanced out with a dry, paper papyrus, combined with violet, some slight spice from cardamom, all tied together with a distinctive leather accord. The base is a bit powdery with some slight iris blended with amber. This is a highly polarizing but also very unique fragrance. It’s nothing unpleasant at all, but also unusual and very distinctive. The popularity is well earned, and it has almost a calming like quality to it. It actually has some really similar undertones to Dior’s “Fahrenheit”, specifically the older batches. The combination of violet, leather, and woods, with the slightly ozonic nuances put it in a similar realm, although Santal is a bit more calming and less aggressive. It smells very different to all different kinds of people. To some it smells like dry woods, to others, a dill leather combination. To me personally, it reminds me of wearing a brown leather jacket, arriving in a cozy, industrial looking cafe after a long walk in the rain, and observing the city outside of the window.

One of the types of the fragrance world carriers that actually doesn’t get a lot of love are solids. I’ve not seen a review on solids for a long while. That’s gonna have to be something new for our group to review and I’m just the guy to do it. Coming soon, Nørge Scents. I was asked give feedback and review after wearing it for a week, and I can’t wait to share it with them and you as well. I’ve got three incoming: Nordic Sandalwood, Northern Smoke, & Midnight Mountain.

I got my sample in yesterday and sprayed it on last night. It opens with a deep, dark pomegranate note tempered with red fruity notes. The Oudh makes itself apparent fairly quickly and creates a very dark, rich, woody take on red fruit. It's like a glass of Pom in a fragrance. It's perfect for fall / winter / spring date nights and evenings out. It might work in the summer, too, but I'll have to wait to try that as we are having a very mild spring week at the moment with temps in the 60s and 70s (very unusual for this time of year in Texas). Longevity is monstrous. I did two test sprays on my wrist last night, and woke up with it still going strong. It was still very present even after taking a shower and washing my hands several times through out the day today. It finally disappeared around noon after eating lunch and wandering around the mall. It was also an excellent follow up to the Hall of Hallucination that I got yesterday, too. It definitely complimented the scent at the end of the day. This might be my favorite designer fragrance of the year so far. It releases in the US market, and you can test it at Nordstrom's on May 7th. I will definitely be getting a bottle, but at $250 for a full bottle, I'll be waiting a while for it, and hoping it shows up at discounters at some point. But if I do end up splurging at some point, don't be surprised. I liked it so much that today I went to Nordstrom's to check out the rest of Fugazzi's lineup and came home with samples of Angel Dust and Vanilla Haze. I'm definitely going to be checking out more from this house.