Let’s talk a little about fragrance — about what I personally wear regularly, how this interest began, and why some scents have found their way into my everyday collection while others are still sitting in the sample box. Perhaps I just haven’t understood them yet. What you’ll find here is only what I wear regularly.
How do I choose what to wear? Mostly by mood.
I check in with myself, listen to that inner voice, think it over and decide — yes, this is the one for today...
And of course, the weather still has its say, as does the temperature. Heat, rain, cool weather — all of it affects how a fragrance comes across, to varying degrees.
Some scents need their own approach; mood alone won’t always do the job.
Let me say this straight away: I don’t consider myself a fragrance obsessive. An enthusiast — yes, nothing more. And everything that follows is about my own impressions, my experience and my conclusions. You may have a completely different story with those very same fragrances. That’s normal. Fragrance is a personal thing.
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Where did it all start? I asked a friend for advice. Just a simple question: what decent men’s fragrances could I get for myself? And it was on the advice of that friend — a fragrance obsessive, as she calls herself — that my first choices were Dior Sauvage and Creed Aventus.
Well, yes, the classics. And good ones at that. What better starting point than a tried-and-tested classic? Both fragrances suited me completely: they settled on my skin as though they’d always been there. No doubts, no need to talk myself into liking them. Both are must-haves, and both are ones I could buy by the bottle without a sample first.
Then I started reading articles, looking into what else was out there, buying samples... In short, I got drawn in. The original aim was fairly modest — to put together a small collection that would cover a week, with a few extra days to spare. To switch things around with my mood and choose whatever I felt like wearing that day. And little by little, that small collection came together.
I’m going to tell you a little about each of those fragrances here. Some may get a few lines, others probably more. My first impressions, how they changed over time, why I kept a fragrance and still wear it. Again — how I experience it, on my own skin. But let’s not turn personal experience into a universal rule. Everyone has their own opinion, their own perception and even — you may be surprised — their own chemistry.
Now, a little about choosing. It’s all fairly obvious, really, but I came to it through my own experience: trust your own nose, your own skin and your own impressions. You can make all sorts of things sound wonderful in a description, but you’re the one who has to wear them afterwards.
Say you’re in a shop and someone gives you a paper strip to smell. First impression — I like it! So you could just buy it, right? What else is there to think about? But I wouldn’t rush to follow that first impulse. You’ve only met the opening of the composition so far, and it will keep changing. There’s no guarantee that you’ll enjoy everything that follows as much as those first notes.
It’s like music — sometimes you like it from the first notes, but by the time you’ve listened to the whole piece, you’re disappointed. Sometimes it’s the other way round: the opening leaves you puzzled, and by the end you’re delighted, with that ‘wow’ effect.
Some time passes — the opening notes fade, a different character emerges, then something else changes, and gradually you reach the base. And sometimes what you find there is quite different from what you expected at the start.
That’s why I prefer to get a sample first, put it on my skin and give it a proper wear — spend at least a few hours with it and see how it behaves. To find out whether I like the whole composition, rather than just its lovely opening. Otherwise, you can end up buying a bottle and then sitting there thinking: well, why on earth did I do that?
A quick explanation of the numbers you’ll come across in these notes. If I give longevity as six, seven or eight, that’s roughly how long I can smell that particular fragrance on myself.
It’s not a quality score or a promise that you’ll get exactly the same result. It’s simply the number of hours on my skin, with my chemistry. The stars on the pages, meanwhile, are for your ratings of the fragrances — more on that a little further down.
That’s how a collection of your own gradually takes shape. Two or three bottles, five or ten, or more — the number isn’t really the point. What matters is that they’re your fragrances, the ones you want to return to. With time, you get a better sense of what you need, what suits you, and what may be good but simply isn’t you.
So I’d leave claims like ‘this will suit everyone’ or ‘nobody needs this at all’ on the conscience of whoever makes them. Our perceptions are just too different. If someone says, ‘I don’t like it,’ but a fragrance suits you and you enjoy it, then wear it. It’s yours. Someone else has a different nose, different impressions, and there’s absolutely no reason your tastes have to match.
For example, I don’t get on particularly well with fragrances that take over the entire space around them. The person has already walked past, and there’s still a mile-long trail following them. Some people love exactly that, but I prefer something quieter — something I can enjoy without, as the saying goes, gassing everyone around me. That’s the direction I tend to choose for myself.
There are fragrances in my selection that remind me of Aventus to one degree or another. And here I’d like to say something about those endless comparisons. You start reading descriptions, looking at note pyramids, searching for information — and somewhere you’re bound to come across ‘Aventus clone’. Sometimes, with even greater certainty: ‘An exact clone’. That’s it, case closed, no need to look any further.
But to my nose, it isn’t quite that simple. There’s a resemblance; I’m not going to argue with that. But the emphasis may be different, some notes come forward, others move into the background, and the result is a fragrance that feels different. A familiar direction, perhaps, but a different impression. Those nuances are what interest me.
And what counts as an exact clone, anyway? A note pyramid in a description isn’t the full formula. I wouldn’t declare two fragrances identical on the strength of a list of notes. You can compare them and notice similarities, of course, but why immediately stamp everything else as a ‘repeat’? Aventus is a masterpiece, and anything that reminds you of it somehow isn’t even worth your attention? I don’t really understand that approach.
For my part, I wasn’t looking for an exact copy of Aventus. I have it, and I like it. With the others, I want to consider each one separately — what it has of its own, what makes it interesting, and why I want to return to it. We’ll talk about that on each fragrance’s page, without trying to hand out labels in advance.
If your experience is different, or your preferences lie elsewhere entirely, there’s a small poll on the site. You can select fragrances that are or have been in your collection, and write in your own choice or choices in a separate field. On the individual fragrance pages, you can leave a star rating: five means you really like it, one means you don’t like it at all. I’m interested in your impressions too. Perhaps someone will mention something I haven’t tried yet that might suit me as well? You can’t cover everything. There are so many fragrances out there, and plenty of similarities among them too.
Well, that’s probably enough for a start. Next, we’ll move on to the fragrances themselves — I’ll briefly describe what I picked up in them and why I kept them in my collection.
It will be my opinion and my experience.
And you can compare them with your own impressions — perhaps we’ll find some common ground.
