Midnight Sandal

Living in Cologne myself, I could hardly justify missing the new 4711 Collection Absolue release. The first in the set is Midnight Sandal and it starts with the most muted citrus opening that I experienced so far. On spray and for the first 15-30 seconds, you can clearly smell the Bergamotte note, only for it to disappear completely behind the Coriander which then, for a long long time dominates the perfume's development. This is the first Coriander-centric perfume I tried so it took me a while to understand that the creamy, peppery woodyness is supposed to be that exact accord. It's interesting. Creamy wood is not something that rolls over the tongue easily but in this fragrance, there's a lot of that, while simultaneously, there's a sawdust-like raspyness that I usually associate with Cedar more so than Sandalwood. There's spicyness here that reminds me of dry pepper, which is accentuated by an abstract freshness which I assume must be the Jasmin - which explains the bit of white-floral bitterness floating throughout. At this point, Midnight Sandal reminded me of Dior Homme 2020 EdT, which also does the wood + freshness combination, only with much more focus on Iso E Super, which gives Dior Homme a smoothness that Midnight Sandal lacks. Behind the peppery-raspy-woody-fresh-creamyness, the perfume slowly developed a powdery sweetness that was very muted at first but took over more and more presence over the course of a few hours. As a fan of Cardamom, I did not find a lot in here. What I found however was that makeup-like lipsticky powdery sweetness in drydown that Midnight Sandal shares with a lot of other fragrances. After five to six hours, the woodiness, and the coriander presence went away further and further and made space for not much more than that. A very synthetic feeling, lipsticky vanilla. Overall I'm not too impressed with this, personally. While I appreciate the individual notes in Midnight Sandal and can make out a lot of what's "on the label", if you wish, I think the amalgamation is barely more than its parts. It starts as a simultaneously rough and creamy wood and dries down into synthetic lipsticky vanilla. It lasts quite long there, but it's not something unique or particularly amazing in execution either. The woody freshness can be experienced as refined, but it's too rough to really go that way and overall I feel Midnight Sandal lacks a depth that cannot be created by its drydown.