Secret Dreams

Rich boozy-spicy leather The opening is as bold and complex as in Cuir de Russie but more conventional. It has this dark boozy-leathery accord (it's imho castoreum but it doesn't make it stink at all) harmonized with balsamic, spicy and smoky myrrh, dry tobacco sweetened by hay-like, herbaceous immortelle and a bunch of spices. If you are somewhat familiar with the dark, masculine (niche or not) boozy-leathery/tobacco-ey scents, then this might be a safe choice to buy if you want to be sure that you're going to finish your sample. Thanks to this accessibility, this is one of a few AZ's scents I can actually compare to other fragrances. If you took the herbal-aromatic immortele+labdanum leather accord from HdP 1740 and mixed it with Bianchi's The Black Knight, you wouldn't be miles away from Secret Dreams. However, the richness of ingredients prevents it from being another cliched hyper-masculine leather fragrance. Beautiful stuff.

A very gothic opening of turpenic frankincense, incensy oppoponax, smoke and lots of spices (saffron, cumin and cloves) with noticeable booziness. The opening stage is very complex and it feels like a spicy boozy incense. After a few minutes, I detect a suede-like slightly fruity (Dried fruits-like) Osmanthus. On paper, I get some juniper in the opening but I couldn’t detect it on skin. After a few minutes, these notes are joined by a beautiful cigar-like dry tobacco note, and the smoky leather and tobacco combination becomes prominent. The fragrance is very dry at this stage. In the base, I detect a dark woody earthy patchouli and prominent green vetiver and finally it settles into a mossy chypre base with noticeable immortelle.