Maverick

This is for the 2023 Extrait concentration 50ml bottle. Cinderella has come to the ball and this is the magic slipper. If, you read my first review of Maverick 2023 you will know this was not love at first, sight? No that doesn’t sound right because the bottle is gorgeous, a 10/10 in its 50ml form. It was the smell that I hated. I got old 90’s furniture polish mixed with marzipan which is the only cake in the world I have hated all my life since I was a child. I was devastated because I had been buying the 10ml bottles and when looking at the notes after hearing this was being discontinued and saw plum I instantly bought it thinking about 1 Million Lucky and Bad Boy Cobalt which both have plum and are 2 of my favourites. After 3 hours though I came back and edited the rating and made an edit saying this was going to require a few more tries and finally today I can appreciate this for what it is. I think at first I kept concentrating on what I didn’t like instead of just going with it and letting myself experience everything it had to offer and after I got the chance to spray this and go out a walk what I came back with was not what I went out with at all. What a transformation! If this wasn’t unisex and aimed at a feminine audience it could be called Cinderella because it definitely has a beautiful glass slipper with something magic inside of it. It has been a while since I have had to wear something a few times to fully appreciate its true beauty back when I bought D&G Light Blue Eau Intense. Maverick is on a whole other level from that though. I won’t lie and say that the opening is any better because I still needed that time for it to transform in to the beauty that it is now, so I would advise anyone who buys this before it is gone forever because remember this is being discontinued that when they wear it, if they have a night out planned that they spray this on in advance giving it time to work its magic. Before I go any further I have to talk more about the bottle. His 10ml bottles get an 8/10 but his 50ml are a straight up 10/10. It comes in a nice snug velvet fit base that you slide the black glass bottle into that gets covered with a cardboard cylindrical shaped lid with a lovely metal label. The bottle itself is black glass with a good weight to it and a great metal label with embossed text. The lid is magnetic and has crystal quartz on the top in a circular pattern around his unicorn logo. The bottle is pressurised and the atomiser is beyond any of my other fragrance bottles i own. It’s like firing a super soaker pump action water pistol lol. Just amazing. Quality is definitely on Aaron’s mind from the ingredients he uses, all the way to the end product when it gets shipped which always arrives in 1-2 days nationally. International could be different of course. Now for what Aaron prides himself on when creating his products, performance. Once this gets in to its Cinderella at the ball stage wow does this project! No need to sniff the wrist with this one, no sir, this is letting you know it is there and there to stay because the previous times I tried it and woke up the following day and realising that with time comes beauty I knew longevity is a 10/10, plain and simple. Aaron works to produce long lasting fragrances and with Maverick he has succeeded 100%. I have talked about how much of a beauty this becomes but I have not really talked about how it actually smells and what of. Like I said, I hate marzipan which I think was coming from the tonka beans as that can produce an almond like smell in large quantities from what I have read but now that I am enjoying the notes in their entirety and full glory, I am not getting that anymore. The first few times I wore it I wondered where the sweet plum was, in fact I wondered where the sweet anything was but now I get some other rich autumn seasonal cake that I am stuck for words to describe in all honesty. This is gourmand and for a change it’s not a sickly sweet, chocolate with caramel kind of gourmand that has me craving a diabetes nightmare. No Maverick is not cloying or super sweet, it’s just the right amount and I do get the plum, it’s just not the kind you get in 1 Million Lucky or Bad Boy Cobalt. This is more a dry but slightly moist, not a lot, rich cake with a little bit of fruit and if you wear this on date night you will have your date ready to dive in and eat you up. Next to Aaron’s Hard Candy 2023 this is now my 2nd favourite gourmand and although I say Autumn would be a good time to wear it I would say you can wear this at any time of the year. I didn’t think I could enjoy gourmand until I tried Aaron’s fragrances because they were just all too sickly sweet for me. 1 Million Lucky was fine but others like Vicious Cacao was way too sweet for me and Insulo now after realising what can be done with the likes of Hard Candy and Maverick I now find Insulo boring and too safe. I think this can be worn by both men and women but leans more masculine, evening, day, leisure but definitely will be great on date nights for sure that is when it will shine and even though it projects a lot you can wear this to the office for sure. Ok time for scores. Scent the first hour or so I have to be honest a 3/10 I hate smelling like a furniture polish but once we get past that, this is a 10/10 easy! Projection again when we get to the best part on me a 8.5/10 Sillage, my mum said I was leaving a very strong trail around the house which was easy to follow so a 9/10 when that happens. Longevity as I said the beautiful Cinderella at the ball stage lasts in to the next day 10/10, no need to be home by midnight with this one. Value I got this Extrait concentration of 50ml for about £80 and the bottle it comes in just 10/10 absolutely worth it Bottle like I said 10/10 If this sounds like something you would like, get it while you can. He has 10ml bottles for real cheap also another reason value is a 10/10

I first got the Discovery Box, to sift through the various perfumes offered, as many of his perfumes get really good reviews and I have to say, there are a bunch I would like to buy, but Maverick immediately was among the best of the best in the Discovery box, so I got it first. I really really like it. It is so well balanced. Often times you have perfumes with two dozen notes listed and you can only smell 5 or 6, because some of them just overwhelm your nose, while others might be listed, because the ingredients will likely resemble them. This however is fantastic, as I can differentiate all of the notes immediately. First you get a blast of Patchouli and citruses hiding behind a slightly metallic Vanilla scent, that reminds me a bit of PdM Pegasus, but not as piercing metallic, more subtle and refined compared to Pegasus, if you can say that about PdM being less refined than others. Actually on a second thought with the Cedar and Patchouli complementing it the Vanilla leans a bit more toward Pegasus Exclusif, which also is the one I like more over the original Pegasus. Plum and nutmeg creep in sitting on a big log of Cedar wood, with a sweet Tonka finish. If it wasn’t for the woody Cedar note this would be pure gourmand, but the Cedar settles it a bit and combined with the Patchouli actually makes it leaning a tiny bit more masculine, but I have to say I would not mind if a woman was wearing this scent, because it comes off skin very... yummy. At least until the dry down, because then the Patchouli and Cedar are more present than the rest and therefore have it leaning masculine a bit harder. In terms of versatility, this is almost an all year round fragrance and could be your signature scent for sure. The only season I would not wear it is high summer or really hot weather in general, depending where you live. To me the nutmeg actually pushes it into a slightly colder time of the year and the gourmand factor is a tiny bit too dense, to not be cloying in high temperatures, but that said on rainy/colder days during summer, this still works well. If it wasn’t for the nutmeg, a slightly lower sweetness and the citruses were a bit stronger, this would be like a vanilla & lemon popsicle and subsequently an amazing summer scent. If this was a designer fragrance you would likely see a weakened flanker version after 1 or 2 years, specifically boosting the citruses for a full-on summer beach feeling. But aside from high summer, this is an all year long, day and night fragrance. It is date-worthy just as well as it can be worn at work. Maverick does have decent projection, not a beast but also not too weak. You will not overwhelm people and would have to go to very heavy spraying to fill a room, but you will get noticed with 2 or 3 sprays to the neck/behind the ear areas. Longevity is good too. I easily get 8 hours out of it, most of the time 9 to 10 and can still get a weak whiff of it, while moving around. This will likely last all day spaying it onto clothes, although I have to warn you, that I only get the mouth-watering gourmand feeling, when it comes off my skin. Not coming off the bottle or clothes. Considering the quality, versatility and performance this is a bargain at currently less than 100,-€.

I am perpetually bewildered by the lack of recognition given to Maverick - even amongst avid ATH fans. For me this is quite simply the greatest fragrance of all time and I don't say that lightly. It is not simplistic at all despite it's arguably short list of notes. In fact, that is where a lot of it's appeal lies. It is indeed very much a mass appealing scent - someone mentioned that this is something that could well have been done by Parfums de Marly and I agree wholeheartedly, there is a very important distinction here though; Parfums de Marly fragrances are typically masterfully crafted niche recreations of mass appealing scent profiles that are already available elsewhere, a cynic might even refer to PdM as a clone house of sorts. Maverick is not that. It is indeed a mass appealing scent and done to perfection, but this is entirely unique. There is quite literally nothing on the market that smells like Maverick and comparisons to Armani Code and Naxos are quite frankly ridiculous as @Wild_Willy rightly pointed out. I would suggest it sits much closer to Layton in terms of the "vibe" it creates, but it certainly doesn't smell like Layton either. This has all of the complexity of the finest niche fragrances but manages to do so without being polarizing in return. ATH's Maverick is quite literally a unicorn fragrance.

To me, this is Aaron's idea of a designer fresh scent. The quality definitely goes far beyond any designer I've tried. I bought this a while ago and only sprayed it on my arm to smell it. It was nice, but I'm not a huge fan of fresh designer frags. Yesterday was one of the first warm spring days, so I decided to give this a full wearing. The opening was all the citrus and it gives the impression of a fresh scented cleaning product, like most fresh scents do, but in the dry down after a couple of hours, a slightly powdery vanilla and fruit sweetness took over and it became much more complex and the longevity is astounding. I could still smell it the next day. This is far above any designer fresh scent in quality and performance. I also think it is one of the most versatile, suitable for at least three seasons and can be an office scent if you spray lightly, as it is a bomb, or for a night out.

This $hit is legit! The more I wear it, the more I love it. I went to do my laundry yesterday and I smelled a shirt of mine that had been In the hamper for maybe 3-4 days and I got a sniff of something amazing, I grabbed the shirt and started sniffing like biden and I was like WTF is this? It smells amazing, what was I wearing? MAVERICK! holy shit! You mean I was walking around smelling that sexy? I'm gunna need to scare my face up to give all the other men a chance. Hahaha. On the real, this joint is fire and this scent goes from one scent to another. The dry down is a vanilla Tonka sexy bomb. You have to try it out and give it the full wearing before you make any judgment, this fragrance will go through all the seasons in an hour. So have fun because this thing is anything but lenier...