Courser – Pure Essence

This review would have remained my personal note were it not for the fact that this fragrance has no reviews at all, and I think it certainly deserves one - so please excuse the very personal narrative bent of the following! I bought this on my visit to the Acampora showroom in Napoli - a visit that I specifically eked out, during a beautiful and unforgettable trip on which I fell in love with Naples. During the trip, I was yearning to visit a perfumery from a local brand which was both established enough to be a known quantity, but esoteric enough to feel like I couldn’t have done it anywhere else in the world. Acampora ended up fitting the bill perfectly - with only one retail store in the world, and with it being based not even in Rome or Milan, but in my newly-beloved Naples. If you’re ever in the area, it’s well worth a visit - Doriana who works there in particular is such a sweetheart, and took so much time to explain and introduce everything to me. The oil, first of all, is beautiful. The bottle feels very special once you understand the idea behind the aluminium-mirrored glass and the cork and the “exact right amount of air”. But I fell in love fully when I realised that the cork itself was the dabber for application - creating a beautifully succinct application ritual with no mess, and the same consistency as a spray. You quickly flip over the bottle before you open it to wet the cork, and then use the cork itself to dab the oil behind your ears and on your wrist. It’s the exact right amount for three little dabs, and it’s the same every time. As it is an oil, it has great longevity, lasting me a solid ~8-9 hours. I applied it at 9am this morning, and as of right now at 6:20pm, I can still smell the faintest base notes on my wrist. But unlike many oils, the sillage is also great - I would say it easily projects arms-length for a full 3 hours, but without fully overwhelming in that way that high-sillage sprays do. For me, the performance is fantastic. As for the scent - it is gorgeous. I would say, though, that I find that listed accords and order of notes at time of writing are somewhere between slightly off and just somehow not descriptive of my experience of the fragrance, even if strictly/technically true. Part of this is because the fragrance is so well-blended that it’s not the type where you can pick out individual notes, even acknowledging the amateurishness of my own nose. I didn’t actually realise how much that ability to identify the constituent parts describes most modern fragrances I’ve tried until I smelled this one and finally understood what people mean when they say “well-blended”. Yes, it’s a leather - but it’s the freshest and brightest leather that you’ve ever smelled. It’s like a brand new luxury leather jacket, fresh from a designer label boutique - unmistakably leather, but clean and modern, not at all animalic (outside of the minimum that comes with the territory of leather), not heavy, not spicy. The brand description alludes to a masculine character, and it is certainly not feminine in any traditional sense - but I agree with its categorisation as it is very unisex, and very wearable for certain women. It is aromatic in a sense, but not particularly herbaceous or spicy like many so-termed aromatic fragrances. It is definitely not sweet. And I do think that a violet accord is important to describe it, if only just to capture some of its surprising lightness that the accords list somehow doesn’t. On that note (ha) - I don’t smell violet per se, but I can feel its floral presence quite strongly - like, if it wasn’t there, then this concoction couldn’t possibly smell as light and floral-but-not-floral-floral it does. The mate is probably doing some work here as well - I just went over to my jar of mate to have a sniff and I think it does contribute to some of the lightness too. Somehow, it is like the most floral part of mate - not particularly grassy or olive-y or herbaceous as pure mate does smell. This likely goes for the thyme as well - but I don’t think I know what non-cooking thyme smells like enough to detect it! Meanwhile, raspberry and vanilla are usually hallmarks of fragrances that I will hate - usually because they are signifiers of fragrances that are very sweet in character, and often gourmand. Courser is definitely neither. The vanilla is undetectable until the very final skin-scent stage of the drydown, where it is more of a comfy, musky, subtle scent that adds a little bit of softness to the skin. The raspberry I think comes through in the opening, alongside the violet and mate and thyme to brighten and lighten the scent overall, and perhaps is what persists to keep it light until it mutes into skin scent? But as with the other notes, I wouldn’t have necessarily clocked it as raspberry without being told. All I can say is that vibe-wise, it is much more the fresher, tart-yet-powdery scent of uncooked raspberry blessed with a fate far far away from your typical sugar or chocolate concoctions. As for the wood - it definitely is in the woody family of fragrances, which is why I can’t miss it out. But it feels to me like the undercurrent, rather than the smell itself - I don’t explicitly detect cedar (or amber) in particular, as far as the scent goes, because it feels so blended with the leather that my nose recognises so instantly. But like with the violet, I can absolutely feel its presence, and its importance in the overall composition. Finally, the Coursiero Napolitano mentioned in the description is a now-lost breed of horse once native to Acampora’s home region - something that missed my notice when I bought it. In addition to this year being the year of the horse in my heritage - making this scent a particularly auspicious pick (very 缘份, iykyk) - the name gives a beautiful dimension to the scent too. Somehow it does feel like leather come alive and emboldened - clean, fresh, bright, swift. The scent definitely does have a strong personality, which I have fallen in love with. It feels unique, but more in its many subtleties than in any particular weirdness or edginess. It’s been over a week of putting it on every morning for me by now. I find it easy to wear, and will - on the daily, for the next good little while.