Båre

My favourite woody scent from all houses that I have tried (and I have HUNDREDS of fragrances). The blend is just sublime, and i cannot recommend sampling this highly enough! (Their sample set is a great way in, some of the others are great too!) Lots of love for this house! Super strong ethics, and OK, I'm not a fan of big bitter woodies or patchoulli ('bark' and 'patch', respectively), and 'cake' is terrifyingly sweet, but the rest of them are REALLY really good!!

Rugged coniferous spirit mellowed out with a little nip of sweetness - cuddly bear! Only a little surprised that this turned out to be my favourite from the brand - as a long term cone-head very fine-tuned to sniffing out pines, resins and Nordic-forest scents I was expecting to like it, but thought the resinous Frank would be the clear winner. In the end the Bare won the tussle due to its hairy-chested enthusiasm - it's a properly outdoorsy, redolent, sinus-clearing blast, smelling of trees. What's not to like? Not at all pretty, not a triumph of art like Fille en Aiguilles, not an outrageous niche tour-de-force like Norne, - this is more of a big burly guy in a checked flannel shirt, a bushy beard and a woolly hat out hunting - but it has integrity. Plenty of grit, a real tang of nature and a warm heart within (the conifers are so realist that the vanilla is tamped right down and not clashing, but just giving a mellow layer of old leaves underfoot). Not sophisticated but straightforward, then - log-cabin contentment as it should be done. Why fancy it up and make things more complicated when the Bare necessities are enough? I like it very much indeed and would like to cuddle up with it from autumn onwards, maybe even overwinter in close physical contact. If you love any of the usual pine-and-fir suspects (Fille, Norne, Wazamba, Beach Hut Man, etc) then take a nature trek with Bare and see where you end up. If you go into these woods today, you may not get much of a surprise, but you're likely to enjoy the stroll I think.

I am really taken by this, certainly my favourite of the And Fragrances. The beautifully ferocious pine and fir lunge out at first but are soon tempered by the vanilla, taking the edge off to settle into a lush conifer cream. It doesn't really project all that much and while the longevity is good it can get a bit boring in the dry down. Eau de Baux has a similar but more enjoyable dry down; however, after about eight hours the vanilla is all that is left and takes on a gentle animalic, bready skin scent that does make it a bit more interesting. It is similar at this point to Bean. I found all the And fragrances to have a signature scent that is a bit off-putting, making none of them safe blind buys. Bare seems to ameliorate it for me and is neither sweet nor overpowering. Would love the woods to put up a bit more of a fight with the vanilla.

I feel like this is Måd’s more masculine, green sibling. The resinous, pine tree scent is matched by the sweet and tangy vanilla and this feels like a fresh Christmas perfume! On paper it’s light and not overly exciting but on my skin it warms up and the sweetness starts to smell like a sort of vanillic skin musk, but then you have those bright, green, fir tree notes on top! I’d describe this as a green vanilla. Budget alternatives to this sort of profile would be Lolita Lempicka Green Lover and CKin2U for her - both more citrusy but have a green and resinous vanilla vibe!

Strange but alluring combination of sweet, sour, green and piny notes. Grapefruit peel and pine needles, plus, tender sweetness. Also can smell some kind of saltiness in the background. ps: after I learned that the Nose was working for Lush before, I can’t give up the idea it reminds me of some Lush perfume)) or maybe has like similar DNA