Harlem Nights

YSL M7/Red Tobacco by Mancera crossover. Yes, really! Harlem Nights (HN) is my favorite release by Chris Collins. It starts with a warm, spicy sweetness. Similar to Red Tobacco (RT). Sweeter than RT, with a tonka beans-like sweet woodiness. HN is also less spicy and rounder (as opposed to sharp). This warm, round, sweet spiciness is quite charming! As it dries down, the lightly-woody sweetness turns ambery (rummy), and the spiciness starts to dial down. Here the scent becomes more like YSL's legendary M7 and less like RT: sweet, deep ambery scent with light spiciness and hints of patchouli. Warm, spicy, lightly-sweet, ambery, rummy, charming. It really is a beautiful scent that manages to melt 2 iconic scents into 1! However, and this is a big "but", I've tried many releases from Chris Collins, and as I said in my review of Citrus Grandis, the releases suffer from a few things: 1. The performance is weak. Skin scent after 1 hour. Lasts ~4-6 hours. 2. While HN is one of the most creative scents from the house, the majority of their scents are still not quite the unique/niche scents for their asking price. This brings us to... 3. The price is too high. $175 for 50ml is more expensive per ml than getting either Red Tobacco, its brother PdM Carlisle, or YSL M7. In fact, I bet you can get a bottle of M7 and another of RT for that price from discounters/eBay. I love this scent but do not see myself as a cautious spender shelling that amount for that volume with that performance. Hopefully, if it hits the discounters. A beautiful, warm, and inviting masculine scent. Suitable more for the cool seasons. "Love"

Discovery sets are $15 for all 7 scents including shipping. The bad thing is the vials are terrible. 3 out of 6 that I have tried are not worthy of a company that sells bottles at almost $5 per ml. This and Danse Sauvage are my faves so far as I have yet to try Oud Galore.My vial did not spray,more of a slow dribble like a newborn. The scent is nothing short of spectacular. Booze,spices,woods with an underlying sweetness that lasts about 6 hours. It screams November- March as the perfect seasons to wear this. Most likely it will lasts longer if your vial actually sprayed. His team should have figured this out before launching or maybe this is the reason the samples are so cheap?

This is so sexy. This is what I imagine the Savoy Ballroom smelled like during the Harlem Renaissance, with Count Basie performing, and all the literary and cultural giants of that time "letting their hair down." It's a boozy, alluring, sensual powdery musk. "Harlem is vicious modernism. Bang clash. Vicious the way it's made. Can you stand such Beauty? So violent and transforming" - Amiri Baraka "Return of the Native"

Sweet, spicy, slightly earthy and musky with a warm, creamy, and very boozy finish😊! When to wear: Nighttime/All Seasons Who Should Wear: Unisex Sillage: Moderate Longevity: 8+ hours for me Top Notes: Rum, Clove, Nutmeg Heart Notes: Jasmine, Orris, Patchouli Base Notes: Sandalwood, Amber, Musk

the top notes are saffron and nutmeg with a boozy quality that morphs into a tobacco vibe with lots of vanilla, sandalwood, patchouli, cedar and musk but it maintains the saffron, nutmeg, booze and tobacco throughout the fragrance

Maybe I'm just weird, but I smell a bit of cola note when I spray it on my skin. So to me it smells like a dapper gentleman sipping the finest rum and coke money can buy, and I absolutely love it.

Smells so good. Great for a night out. Unisex but leans a bit more masculine to me. Not overpowering. The smell sticks around for a good while.

I received this fragrance in a sample set with varying scent profiles. When I tried this on today, it was in warm winter weather. Immediately I can smell something my nose is identifying as rubber, but that note isn't listed. I also immediately smell powdery orris root since it's one of my favorite notes. The dry down of this is very pleasant, like a smokey powder. I find this fragrance to be very interesting because it leans heavily masculine on my skin from the start, but it has a sweet softness to it once that rubbery note fades. Kind of like a new car scent, fresh leather and starched shirts. It smells very adult. Definitely unisex, as it's not the typical "man" fragrance, but I can see why a woman of a certain caliber would enjoy wearing this. It might be nice to layer with something that is pomade sweet rather than candy sweet.

Harlem Nights is a peculiar gourmand blend with spices, rum and earthy orris. First you get a nice glass of the Mai Tai cocktail, and the focus stays on it for a while. Then the nice silky earthiness of iris and saffron will start to distract you from your drink. The combination of the two is mesmerizing–of a cool and restrained beauty. I always think of powdery earthy iris as the silk lining of an expensive coat, usually masculine, and the fragrance completes my perfect picture with a nice drink in some trendy cafe, and a night walk in a cool city.

My nose keeps insisting there's cardamom here but thankfully, no tobacco. Spices drift off after a few minutes and I'm left with sandalwood and vanilla. Not overwhelming nor too masculine, I'm encouraged to further explore this perfumer.

Definitely Unisex. Leans slightly more Masculine. I really like it. I notice the Rum and Iris first. I think this could be a great Fall Date Night scent.

It's a pleasant-enough fragrance, but too weak and prim for the story it's meant to be telling. The volume needs turning up.

darker spice + cardamom. sweet taboo without the sweetness

What comes through on me is primarily the rum, saffron, a little bit of unspecific woodiness, and the vanilla. At first spray it reminded me of some super-popular, powerhouse perfumes, but when it settles down it becomes more unique and is quite nice, and certainly less overwhelming than it is at its top. Definitely creates a scent bubble that's noticeable to others--I had multiple people wonder if I was burning a candle in my office the day I wore it. Feels like more of a nighttime scent, though not wholly inappropriate in daytime, and would probably suit cooler temperatures best. Wear time around 8 hours.

Extremely tamed fragrance (measured from my prior expectations). It's like you're making a wood carving sculpture but end up overpolishing it here and there until it's left with a distorted shape and less trace of the beauty of the raw material(s). In other words, I get spices, but it's not spicy. Also, get the rum but without booziness. Orris, vanilla, and nutmeg combined smell like some sweet, milky, nutty drink to me, which I find cloying, a bit bland, and quite unpleasant. I thought I'd love this :(

This smells like banana laffy taffy to me for the first 10 minutes, then turns into something more like what I'd envision a "Harlem Night" in the Harlem Renaissance to smell like: leather, tobacco, rum, and the slightest bit of smokey wood. Somehow, though, it falls a bit flat. It's pleasant, but I agree with TunyaPe below that somehow this is a "tamed down" fragrance that just doesn't have the sexy and mysterious "oomph" or "je-ne-sais-quois" that I'd want a name like "Harlem Nights" to have.

It's alright, it's not as sexy as I expected it to be. I mostly smell the rum. It might be too medicinal and sharply woody to really be sexy. It doesn't warm up on my skin, either.

gummy bears wrapped individually and sold in payments of 4. 🕴🏻🕴🏻🕴🏻

Perfectly nice boozy saffron confection.

Oh dear. This is a bit of a funny one. I've been across 110th street at night and it don't smell like this, believe you me. I think this is a bit muddled in the pursuit of making something unique, which is an admirable motive for getting in a bit of a mess in the first place. The opening gives me warm to hot spices, I'll go along with nutmeg, clove, perhaps a little cinnamon and even saffron, but the sweetness is an unusual cheap cherryade/maraschino cherries, benzaldehyde and coumarin, which is dying out as soon as it hits your skin because it's offset by hollow, papery woods and faintly floral ionone, driness and that bready, milky, tepid cup of half english breakfast, half chai tea, feel from something like Dries van Noten by Frederic Malle but frankly not as complex or interesting. This effect will forever remind me of the scent that pioneered this vibe which for me was Jeux de Peau by Serge Lutens. To be fair it's not quite as relentlessly, foodie and odd as the Malle, When I sprayed this on a test strip I really liked the late drydown of musks and whatever left in the base of this fragrance, it really does smell beautiful but that happens all the time with fragrances I don't really like and is the classic addage, too little, too late, to the point where that lovely smell on the strip might not going to be detectable on my skin. (it isn't) Not a good start for the brand then for me but I have high hopes about a few of the others.