Colorado

Colorado is both the first fragrance released as a limited edition at the American Perfumer boutique of Louisville, as well as Dawn Spencer Hurwitz’s first release for the boutique. Colorado is really a fantastic creation and worthy of being American Perfumer’s first exclusive limited edition. It smells like a wholehearted homage to the woods the American West, a love letter of various spruce notes, a distinctive greenness (described as a leafy accord), several types of resins, and just a pinch of lemon and bergamot to brighten up on the whole mix. It’s woody but not in the sense of dead furniture, but rather, living trees, the sweetness of the resins being ubiquitous. Colorado as satisfying as a walk outdoor and as wholesomely sappy as Miracle on 34th Street, its balsam and amber providing sweet syrupy grace to the canvas of the trees. It’s vegetable and fresh without being gourmand, outdoorsy without being dirty, artistic but still realistic. Colorado walks a lot of tightropes in achieving its balance and it’s through a zen-like patience, I imagine, that Dawn has achieved this harmony. Overall, it’s a superb mix of spruce and resins with citrus and floral hints but a predominant sense of sappiness mix with woods in a mix that is versatile, both somehow relaxing and exciting, both winter and summer together. I feel very lucky to have nabbed a bottle. Bravo to Dawn on this wonder, a real treat, and exemplary of why I love this hobby so much. 8 out of 10

This smells of trees... The forest... If anyone has ever spent a lot of time splitting wood then you will know this smell... This smells like the air in a deep dark woods or that you would smell around a large freshly stacked woodpile... Not just the smell of cut wood (which most 'woody' fragrances seem to try to emulate) but even that more bitter smelling bark that you get in the air... I've never come across a fragrance that just puts me in a place like this... Never... Scents will often conjure memories and put you in a specific time... Not this... This puts you in a place... This just puts you in the forest... The forest air... Old growth... And that's not a bad thing... It's actually quite incredible and for me comforting... I don't think it would be easy to wear out (which is good since it is a VERY limited edition with only like 50 bottles being released each year) but as far as art or the interpretation of the forest I can't say I've ever come across its like before... Dawn you outdid yourself on this one... This is magnum opus level stuff... Smitten... Completely smitten... (Review is based on a 2022 Full Bottle)

This is a beautiful fragrance. My skin tends to collapse citruses and woods quickly unless they use resin fixatives (depending on many variables, of course). I get general evergreen notes, as well as some distinct handoffs, through most of the development balanced with creaminess and floral notes I can’t identify with something of a shadow underlying them. This is one of the few fragrances I’ve tried where the marketing copy isn’t pablum. I highly recommend it, but your mileage may vary. (NB - I got it as a sample, so I can’t speak to the price:value ratio. I always find that question somewhat silly, though, because a person with three or four fragrances in their arsenal is more likely to lose a bottle to age than to get through it, rendering the price:use ratio essentially nil.)

I don't often (ever?) use the term "life-changing" to describe scented water, but here we are. Thank you, Dawn, for creating this scent. It's like a little Tardis box that takes me back to my happy place in the mountains of Silverton. I can't afford (in every sense of the word) to go back "home" and visit, but this little bottle manages to transport me back when I need it the most. I am (usually) a perpetual oversprayer, even with most discontinued / hard to find scents, but this is one of a handful of scents that I spray extremely sparingly (2 sprays, max), so that I can cherish my bottle and make it last as long as possible. My nearly full bottle is only missing about ~5 mLs, and I'm already on the hunt / desperately trying to find another back-up.

First and foremost, this is an amber fragrance, a very sweet amber with a pine edge; love it

smelled this from a friend and on strip this is a very unique fragrance. I've never smelled this before honestly. this is a clean green to my nose, its a bit woody but it has this cleaner-like smell almost but it's something you can wear. Personally, I wouldn't wear this but i can appreciate this scent. 7/10 on my end, but this isn't bad.

Colorado held lofty promises for me, containing spruce and fir which are some of my favorite notes in perfumery. While I can detect these in the mix if I look for them a bit, the main character of this fragrance to my nose is lemon citrus with a bitter celery. Fir sap does have a kind of citrus-y lemon scent to it, but this is much more lemony than sap and does not have the underlying resin to it. If I sniff closely I can make out the kind of "texture" that fir provides, but not to the actual note. I do wonder if this is different than the AP version since I just don't smell the woods of my home state like the other reviewers do. A disappointment, to be sure.

It starts off like a mixture of citrus and maple syrup. If I had stuck around with it longer it might have developed nicely, but it was so overwhelmingly syrupy I just couldn't take it. I scrubbed it off. Eventually I might give it another try, but what I got reminds me more of breakfast than my beautiful state.

I honestly get more of the lemon than the trees, and I am a bit disappointed. Performance and strength are not great for me either. It's like a juniper-y lemon. I have a sample size so I will try it a couple more times, but I think this is a miss for me.

This smells like straight up fir balsam or pine essential oil. Maybe it’s me, but I don’t really get anything else.

Looking for a bottle, don’t mind how much is left. DM me if every looking to move on 🙏