Boundless

(READ TO THE END TO SEE MY SWITCH UP.) Update: it came in and here are my initial impressions on skin; This is like the niche version of tobacco vanille. Really similar tobacco and vanilla scent profile, but much more oriental, middle eastern, and has an amouage signature funk. Gorgeous perfume. Update #2: the longer Boundless sits on skin, the more mass appealing it becomes (pretty much that resinous “funk” begins to dissipate) and you’re left with a gorgeously blended perfume in the same family of tobacco vanille. It still has a much more middle eastern kick, but that is mostly in the first 30 minutes. This is my first amouage from their new creative director (I have enclave on the way too though), and I really understand why people have been upset. Let me rephrase that. By no means is this a bad perfume at ALL, in fact it would be most brand’s star perfume, but when you compare this to pretty much all of the past amouage’s it really does feel like a different brand compared to boundless. Final thoughts: this is a gorgeously perfumed fragrance, and the ingredients are extremely high quality. It smells amazing, but it’s nothing new. If the opening lasted throughout with that resinous funk, it would feel much more “amouage”. However, for people who can’t get along with the brand, it’s a great one to own because it’s still middle eastern-smelling while not being challenging to wear. My score as of right now is a 9.3/10. It’s gorgeous, and it’s better than tobacco vanille. I just miss that amouage artistic style that I look for in niche perfumery. Edit: yeah I was wrong. This is why you don’t write a review after only wearing it for an hour. I’m another hour in and the spices and resins and tobacco and shining so well. Smooth and now it smells much more “amouage”. It took a HUGE step away from tobacco vanille, and now smells absolutely NOTHING like it. But the first hour does which is why so many people say there’s a similarity. Theres not. Boundless has a spicy funk to it and that’s what’s making it so good. I was worried that it was super mass appealing and Amouage shouldn’t be... and I can say that it’s not. It’s not nearly as challenging as their past creations, but it’s not an easy going perfume. The spiciness and resin combo gives off a little bit of a dirty funk that’s so addictive. Score is at a 9.7/10 now. Someone previously mentioned a cumin note and I was so confused because there was not even a hint of that in the beginning. But now later in the perfumes lifespan, there is a stinky resinous and spicy cumin note that’s making it less mass appealing and so much more addictive.

This is an instant love for me. I have to say I'm a huge fan of warm spicy and ambery fragrances. This is both, and evoked a strong sense memory for me. When I smelled it, I instantly was struck with deja vu, thinking this reminded me very strongly of another perfume from long ago....I had it! It's a better version of the *original* Rose 31 marketed towards men, before Le Labo nerfed it with reformulations to make it more unisex and mass appealing. That combination of rose and cumin had me hooked back then, but after reformulations it fell off my list of frags. Anyways, Boundless is like if you took that original, and made it better in every way. The original Rose 31 had a cumin note that was sweaty, body odour like, dirty and animalic. The cumin note in Boundless is so well blended with the rose and other notes that it is comes off as dry and balsamic, and not dirty or sweaty at all. It's one of the few times I've smelled cumin used well. It has the rose-cumin accord at its core, but instead of that being all there is and a bit watery and transparent in the Le Labo version, it's surrounded with a symphony of warm spices, frankinsense, and deepened with amber. This version is undoubtedly masculine and strong, where Le Labo's was very androgynous and weak. This is so good, I keep smelling my arm. The projection on this is very, very good. One spray and the sillage will fill up a room and leave quite a nice scent trail. It's not nuclear like Black Orchid or African Leather, just a solid performer even with one spray, and I believe one spray is all you need. Really good fragrance, and Amouage is currently giving away free samples with any purchase on their website. A note on the House of Amouage, which is that you can instantly smell the signature and quality of the house. The perfumes are rich, dense, opulent, and super high quality. You can really smell the quality of the formulations. There's something about Amouage that when I put my nose on one of their fragrances, I get a ringing sensation in my nostrils, like a physical sensation akin to vibration. Who knows what that means, but it's interesting nonetheless. This is value for money, I think a full bottle would last for years given how powerful the juice is. I want to see how long my two 2ml samples last, then maybe consider getting a full bottle. I also have to make it through my other Amouage and MFK samples first. 10/10 Snifftacular!

I’ve sampled Boundless a few times since 2022 and I finally decided to pull the trigger on a full bottle, which I got for a good price: $374AUD/$247USD I typically don’t like sweeter fragrances, but I find Boundless to be the perfect balance of coziness and sophistication. As far as Amouage fragrances go these days, this feels like a bridging fragrance: the old style of Amouage meets their new direction. Boundless is bold & daring, yet very inviting. The opening is very spicy - cabinet levels of spices. After 5-10 minutes things start to mellow out, and by the end of the first hour we are left with a sweet, slightly syrupy, gorgeously spicy scent bubble. There’s a brightness to this fragrance that stops it from smelling stale or overly dark, of which I think would be unpleasant for this kind of fragrance. Over the hours this just gets better and better, it’s very addictive & comforting. I purchased Boundless to be a comforting companion this coming winter, especially during weekend while I’m hanging around at home, enjoying coffee on the couch and going on walks as the temperature drops. Boundless is ‘different’ enough to capture your interest, but will not distract you or others throughout the day. I think that is perfectly suitable to wear on a cold night out with friends & loved ones, it’s a really fun fragrance to experience. I will note however that for non-fragheads or new-comers to this hobby, that the spiciness may be challenging for the first hour. Less is definitely more, you will appreciate occasional whiffs of this high-quality fragrance - however this is will choke you out if you go overboard (like many amouage fragrances). I’m not saying this to be a ‘fragrance snob’, but it’s worth keeping an open mind when trying Boundless or most Amouage fragrances for the first time. Ultimately, Boundless is an experience. At this price point you should expect a fragrance to do more than smell nice, it should take you on a journey. That might sound corny, but that’s why fans of Amouage keep coming back. I’ve owned a number of different Amouage fragrances over the years; Jubilation XXV, Interlude, etc - Boundless is amongst the best from the house.

Wonderfully friendly and warm but also rather cunningly sophisticated - a gorgeous sweet treat with very upscale, even luxurious, spicing and a lacquering of the very finest resins. Not to mention genuinely delicious cacao and orange. For me it twinkles and lures like Christmas - an irresistible collision between a very upscale oriental myrrh/benzoin/elemi ball from some Mideast bazaar and the more downscale but still spherical charm of a Terry's Chocolate Orange*. Those sensory associations with all things festive mean that for me, this is MADE for lifting the spirits in times when the world seems cold, dark and cruel; it's a bit much to deal with in warmer weather or sunny days, but for snuggling with as a perfumed comfort blanket in winter, it's matchless. [ * For the non Brits reading: Terry's Chocolate Orange is a cheap but cheerful mass-market, orange-sized ball of chocolate, plain or milk, flavoured with orange oil and sold in the UK around Christmas, which somehow magically breaks apart into moulded orange-like 'segments' when you tap it on a table. It's basic but compelling - unlike Amouage Boundless, which is very much NOT basic, but conjures the same happy feelings. ] Totally unisex in my view and well judged enough to work in any context. Though I've nothing whatever bad to say about it in any guise, there might be some batch variations to watch out for - while my early decants of this were absolutely rich with dark cocoa solids and positively zinging with orange zest, a tester bottle I bought later on seemed was a little blander, less spicy and more centred on the mellow, un-smoky tobacco in the scent's central zone. Still not bad at all, but not quite the spectacular dark-chocolate ooze of the earlier iteration. So do test if you're going to hold it to the very highest of standards.

I like Boundless a lot, to summarize it is a tobacco and vanilla, but it is actually much more than that: in the beginning it is sweet and spicy with orange, cardamom and ginger, then it becomes a little less sweet and more resinous woody, with vanilla, tobacco, incense and I smell a lot of cloves in it. It projects well for a couple of hours, then becomes more intimate, the total duration is 6/8 hours. As with all Amouages, there are a lot of resins and incense, it is a complex, sweet but still masculine scent. One of the first times I wore it, and I didn't know it very well, I was grocery shopping and as I was walking down the aisles, I smelled this good, good scent and I thought: 'where does it come from? What is it ? I mean, nothing, it was me. It has a calming effect on me, it also makes me fantasize a lot and stimulates my imagination. It is a kind of perfume that when you smell it on someone else, you wonder: "Why don't I have a perfume like that?" Its drawback, compared to the others in the house, is its relatively short duration and unexceptional projection, at least after the first two hours, when it becomes quite weak, but very good, a vanilla amber with boozy and gourmand touches; in my opinion, it is perfect for autumn, it has something that reminds me of sweets, candied fruit, chocolate and something liquorish. Also, for me, it's a scent that lingers, sometimes even giving me olfactory hallucinations, in the sense that sometimes I can smell it in the air even though I haven't sprayed it... In summary, I would say: intense, delicious, comforting.