This is a citrus aromatic built around a grapefruit opening with ginger and musk in the heart. It dries down to a woody patchouli. Its a fresh, radiant, slightly ambery citrus scent thats clean but has depth. It’s smooth and well blended. It feels luxurious and versatile, good for spring/summer/day use, but could be used all year. Longevity and projection are strong. I get 8+ hours on skin, and longer on clothes. Projects strong for the first 3-4 hours. It performs especially well in heat. The bottle is a nice heavy glass with a tiger’s eye inspired stone in the cap. Excellent if you like fresh grapefruit forward scents with a musky woody backbone. Highly recommended!

Last of my PDM samples. I didn’t even realise until I checked today. Before trying it, I was a bit gutted to be ending on a fragrance I had never seen anyone talk about. That changed quickly once I tried it. The opening made me go “wow”. The note breakdown didn’t make much sense to me because right off the bat I got bergamot freshness, sage and lavender aromatics, sweet praline, and warm saffron. Stays the same in the mids with less freshness and the dry down becomes simpler, with the warmth stepping back and a touch of sweetness remaining alongside oud, patchouli, leather, and vetiver. It’s luxurious, warm, fruity, woody, leathery, slightly green, and perfectly balanced. Definitely a cool to cold weather frag. It’s everything I wanted Oud for Greatness to be. This also confirms my oud tolerance. Anything stronger than this feels unnecessary (sorry not sorry @Paul Bartnicki) I don’t think I can give an accurate performance estimate today as my skin is supposedly dehydrated. However, this is roughly a 7-10+ hr fragrance with strong projection for the first few hrs. The sillage and scent trail are excellent too. I really like this DNA and want to explore more fragrances in this space. I don’t want to be blinded by just this one, so suggestions are welcome. I’ve heard Widian Liwa and Ormonde Jayne Muscat sits in a similar realm. Overall, I’m giving it a 9.7/10. It smells objectively perfect. Second only to Cedrat Boise for me. Luckily it’s not popular and has no good clones, so it could easily be a signature scent. I still need to retest performance, but the fragrance itself is excellent. Points deducted for lack of uniqueness and the price tag. Top 3 PDM for me and possibly the first I purchase. Currently it’s a top 10 fragrance of all time for me. What are your thoughts on this?

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.