Spicy Amber

Blend 3/5 (Doesn't project) Uniqueness 4/5 (where other recipe usually put wood behind the curtain. This one doing one thing only; wood forward.) Quality 5/5 (Wow, photo-realistic 3D wood!) Spicy Amber is a 3D photo-realistic wood fragrance. It uses camphorous and lighter coloured kind of wood, such as cedar, sandalwood, and palo santo. Makes it a floating breeze to wear in the summer and wearable in all seasons. The scent has a very natural and 3D realistic. It has mellow feel; something like having essential oil on your bedside. It's camphorous and sits close to the skin, with no projection. Although they tries to strechted out camphorous base using sugary sweetness. Yet still the projection comes out very frail and faint. The sweetness can be little bit plasticky scent that saffron can have and also little bit ice cream cone vanilla scented. Without the creamy vanilla type. Unfortunately they really doesn't project. When I dig my nose in, only then I can appreciate the full body of the olibanum, frankincense, and resin. I don't blame them. Which I believe it's very hard to blend resin, especially to make it more volatile to project outward, and liquid enough to work with a pressurized sprayer without clogging them. Compared to other French Avenue fragrance, or other brand out there; I believe Spicy Amber is the best photo-realistic wood I ever smelt.

I picked this up as a long-term replacement for Zara Bohemian Oud, which I typically love layering with bright rose scents. From my initial impressions, Spicy Amber is more syrupy, less chocolatey and slightly more peppery than Bohemian Oud. I would say this is more of a midpoint between the pure spice of Paris Corner Rifaaqat and the sweet syrupy texture of Khamrah DNA. Because of the differences, I'm in the process of re-inventing my layering combos, but I'm finding that chocolate-forward scents pair quite well with this. Riiffs Momento smells very nice when layered above this (it basically turns Spicy Amber into a more full-bodied Bohemian Oud), as does Lattafa Mayar Cherry Intense. A very fun fragrance to mess around with if you enjoy layering, in any case.

I love Matiere Premier Encens Sauve is one of my favourite fragrances of all time. To find a match to it at a fraction of the cost is fantastic. It’s spicy, warm, incense that delivers. Not a loud projection, great skin scent.

I absolutely fell in love with Encens Suave the first time I smelled it but 350 QUID FOR YHE ELIXIR! Found this absolute gem of a dupe and it smells exactly the same! Can’t believe how good the price and the scent is!

Vanilla where? No vanilla in the house so far maybe it needs to macerate? Badass little red riding hood by night in a dark spooky forest brings some rose incense and a bag of cloves and freshly ground pepper to grandma..? That's the image I conjured. A burst of rose infused Greek church incense, way too realistic - I live next door to a major Greek Orthodox temple and now I smell like it. I don't complain, I love unique, realistic and weird scents. Nothing warm and cozy really, just balsamic, very balsamic. I expected a resinous a bit nutty incense or myrrh type of scent like Zara's Feminine Spell or Demeter's Frankincense (which becomes powdery) but there's none of that vibe in this. (Funny but Demeter's Myrrh is piney, fresh and soapy, go figure). I love churchy scents however this is rather cold so far, austere, dark. The rose is rather green at the top, a tad heady, balsamic floral, not powdery tho, and mixed with the incense they create that perfect mature, burning rose frankincense scent that I grew up with in Greece which comes in these small stones/pebbles covered in white dust - they smell powdery, heady balsamic, not always resinous and syrupy sweet. This is not as heady as the actual incense stones tho (I just smelled some to double check). So it's not the chewy decadent scent of some of these resin pebbles (there are many varieties). The incense here smells slightly smoky and heavy as when it's burnt. I don't get an obnoxious fireplace type of burning smell tho. The smoky aspect imo also comes from the dark peppery coffee-cedar and the vetiver being smoky sometimes. I also smell a spicy balsamic cloves undertone within the churchy scent along with the pepper and it's prolly from the rose blending in. That aspect reminds me of the cloves note in Tonka Reminiscence and that's a subtle warm element in this. So the already green rose incense scent is quickly joined by that fresh peppery dark coffee and a piney and woody foresty smell kinda like Harpic Pine toilet cleaner for a minute (real incense usually has a piney undertone as a resin but as a note it usually doesn't have the piney smell unless it's balsam fir. Balsam fir smells heavier tho). Its green piney essence I suspect comes from the cedar being a middle note and the vetiver. Cedar keeps it dry being a middle note and it's responsible for that austere vibe (cedar does that a lot). Cashmere reinforces the balsamic ambery vibe I guess and it does render it a bit smoother progressively. Eventually the piney nuance becomes subtle and the pepper is at the forefront. So the peppery dark accord from the coffee lasts throughout. Very common for coffee mixed with ambery cedar or nutmeg and cardamom notes to come off peppery and spicy as in Risala Pista Kunafa and in Creamy Coffee Abode by The Dua Brand. This is the most mysterious and dark out of these two perfumes and I'm still waiting for that smooth sweet vanilla to show up. Coffee almost always gives me a chocolate scent even in the aforementioned scents (not much in Creamy Coffee Adobe) but here I don't get any chocolate to my surprise. It's a rather masculine leaning at first due to the pepper overload and the piney undertone. No smiles, no cream, no syrup, no vanilla sweetness. It becomes more feminine at the later drydown tho as the piney scent subsides. I like it tho cuz I love green foresty and woody scents and anything incense and resinous. Not crazy anymore over peppery scents however I don't mind it here. This isn't a syrupy resinous scent so far, it's wandering in that smoky piney spicy peppery territory. I'll wait for it to macerate and I'll come back to report. So to wrap it up, it's quite linear while the pepper and piney elements are quite dominant and from start to finish I smell like a Greek Orthodox chapel that burns rose incense in clouds of haze like a hookah bar located in a pine forest.