Alexandria's United Kingdom

This one was thrown in as a freebie in my Alexandria Fragrances sampler set, and I was REALLY leery of it when I read that it was a predominantly leather scented fragrance. I am no fan of leather fragrances, Drakkar Noir is about the most I can stand as far as leather in a fragrance goes, and that's only because it's buried underneath a mountain of aromatics. This fragrance, though, kind of surpised me. Yes, it has a very prominent leather note to it, but it's a very soft and smooth leather note, like a leather jacket that's been broken in and well cared for. The rest of the fragrance can be summed up with a simple observation from a friend of mine, who said, "this smells like a record shop." So imagine that record shop smell where there's stacks of old vinyl, old comic books, someone's burning incense (as always), and that's pretty much the other half of this fragrance. Kind of an odd fragrance all around, but not bad.

United Kingdom is supposed to be inspired by Roja's Great Britain. I've never tried Great Britain, so can't comment on how similar these two fragrances are. I can state that United Kingdom most definitely did not work for me. The leather scent, what there was of it, was very mild and clean. What was on equal footing with the leather, or perhaps a bit more prominent, was some sort of combination of a generic floral scent mixed with vinyl or plastic. "Vinyl" here being the flexible plastic material, not records. That mix of floral and plastic was not good in a big way. Fragrance impressed me as unisex. Longevity was quite good; got about 9 hours out of it. Sillage was moderate for the first hour or two.