Collection Homme/Thé Brun

This is a very good signature scent candidate: it's unique enough to be recognised by people as your specific smell and its enough of a crowd pleaser to be not offensive to anybody. It's blended masterfully. For me it was love at first sniff. This is a very universal perfume: I've got 60+ perfume bottles, but I didn't have a fragrance that I could wear anywhere and everywhere. Perfect for a sunny day, great date perfume, office safe and beautiful in the colder months. I live in temperate climate area with low humidity. EDIT: I'm desperate for better parameters. The longevity and projection could be much better!

Amazingly wonderful. I bought a bottle of this solely because someone said it was similar to my beloved Russian Tea by Masque Milano. It is ... but it's similar in the way that Cool Water is similar to Green Irish Tweed. Different in execution and sphere: but undoubtedly related and spectacular in their own ways. The Brun - ironically created by the same mastermind who gave us Cool Water - is an absolute unsung gem in the fragrance world, for all the reasons written about here. This has become an instant favorite to place alongside my Russian Tea. Brilliantly elegant and masculine, with an air of comfort.

Highly unique, challenging scent. Very original way of building a fresh fragrance. It smells sort of soapy and old school, high class but still wearable as a modern man! I swear I smell mint in this. This fragrance to me is: violet, mint and smoke. Don't get me wrong but the opening smells sort of like lady perfume. But it works. The drydown is more mellow and serene. This is only for evolved noses that want something completely new, but still wants it to be a fresh fragrance that works in all situations.

Once more I must pay tribute to Luca Turin by disagreeing with him. I think The Brun is wonderful. The powerful but supple smokey green tea gives way to early evening in Provence when the Orangetrees are in bloom and someone has lit a woodfire in the distance..its a long lasting delight that is polite and never shouts.

In a nutshell, the easiest way to describe this is that it is essentially a smoky Millesime Imperial. Another (slightly less accurate) way to view it is that it is a merger between Bulgari Homme Soir and Bulgari Black, absent the creamier vanilla elements and including a fruity mix (I get melon, predominately). Being an avid Oolong drinker, Id like to note that the tea note is much closer to that of lapsang souchong; there is a distinct smoky note, compared to the lighter "toasted / roasted" flavor of Oolong. A juicy/wet fougere, the dichotomy here is between the smoky elements and the wet, fragrant juiciness of tea, orange blossom, and melon (accomplished here more skillfully than in Aventus). It is an interesting balance. The initial blast of smoke settles fairly quickly, and the rest of the fragrance is linear; the smoke slowly giving way to the herbal and floral elements over the life of the fragrance. I think the screechy-ness here is the sharpness of the smoke as it settles. To those unaccustomed to the note, it can be sharp and piercing. The fragrance is tightly blended; the jasmine, orange blossom, tea, and violet all come together like a bushel of herbs after a misting of rain. The melon note keeps things "round" and "moist", and takes the edge off the smokiness so that it doesnt fall into "barbecue" territory like some smoky fragrances do. Performance is solid, 8-9 hours, and this would be a good choice for a man looking for a unique twist on a modern, wet fougere. The addition of tea, smoke, and fruits introduce new facets you dont get in your standard green brew; Aventus tries to achieve this kind of complexity but fails. As always, I am happy to provide samples / decants of any of my fragrances.

I was keeping an eye on this one for a couple months after it became harder to find. I have tried the other two fragrances from this designed and I blind bought this one thinking it may be good, but I prefer the other two. I need to give it more tries, to see if it evolves differently. So far is ok, but just ok. It does smells like tea right at the opening, like a rich cup of black tea... Eureka, I am the only one wearing it in the whole fragrantica community today.. :-)

This is like you mixed MI and SMW, added some smoky tea and warm spices. Its brilliant honestly, it has that Bourdon freshness that only he can make, that musky classy freshness. A hidden gem!

box and bottle coded 624502. after trusting the reviews here, i got a loud, cheap floozy. it may be different, but something different that i hope never to smell again. but, then again, on me it really is no different than sweet sour floral souk at the cheapest price for someone who thinks suffocation is the most seductive foreplay. i have smelled better hair oils. everyone is entitled to his/her own opinion. there are a lot of reasons that beautiful odors are disliked and bad odors evocative to some. the brun hits me like all the overly made-up, overly scented women of a certain age who think more smell, more gold jewelry, more mascara and make-up are more alluring. this projects like a horror movie vomit blast. gave it away, not sorry to see it go.

Oh boy, is that opening rough! It is incredibly antiseptic, and has a weird “the smell of a cast going on” top note, combined with a Bactine and slightly funky Band-aid accord. I sprayed this on a piece of cloth first, to test it, and I was so off-put by the opening that I genuinely cringed and held my breath when I finally decided to put it on my skin. I’m not sure what notes are causing it, but I highly recommend that you don’t dive nose-first into this one. It is not at all pleasant. After about five minutes, it does start to evolve, thankfully, but the evolution is not terribly much better, to be frank. One can just barely detect a waft of melon lending a touch of sweetness behind the “old hospital” top, which slowly opens up a bit a, to a pretty in-your-face floral accord. The first sign of the evolution is a slightly petrol-ish, leather-ish tone, that I have to assume is the violet playing with the other florals and cardamom. This gives away, slightly, to an old-school soapy feeling, heavy with lavender, lily-of-the-valley, and jasmine forming a kind of blossoming bouquet atop the omnipresent medicinal (and slight petroleum) vibe. *** Notably, off clothing, the evolution is somewhat different, as this phase is sharp – almost tart – with bergamot and orange blossom being brought much more into focus, sitting above the “on skin” scent in a way that I’m afraid is really quite unpleasant to my nose. The combination of sharp, astringent fruit and medicinal flowers kind of reminds me of the smell one gets upon killing (or otherwise irritating) a brown marmorated stink bug. It’s sharp, it sticks in the throat and nostrils, and it has a slightly “acrid watermelon” feel to it that makes me involuntarily curl my lip in disgust. ...Then, just for fun, it goes full-on alcohol and antiseptic. I cannot recommend highly enough that you do not spray this on your clothing. It’s horrible. *** Thankfully, on skin, Thé Brun finally starts to turn into something that is vaguely wearable at around the 30-minute mark. At this time, it enters a phase that rather strongly reminds me of Eight and Bob’s “Cap d’Antibes”, which I am going to assume is due to the cinnamon and violet (flower here, leaf there) that they share, with a little underlying sweetness coming from vanilla. It is here, at last, starting at about 15-20 minutes into the evolution of the scent, and fully shifting at around 30-35 minutes, that it finally begins to smell somewhat pleasant. In fact, if you like Cap d’Antibes, this phase should be right up your alley – they are remarkably alike at this point. Then, at long last, around 40 minutes into this tea-centric fragrance, one can finally pick up a discernible tea note – but it’s not a particularly pleasant one. It’s a black tea you forgot you had steeping, and when you go back to drink it, hits you with a blast of sharp tannin concentrate. Or the dregs of a pot of smoked green tea. Given that it’s what I came here for, it is, like the rest of my experience with this fragrance thus far, a massive letdown. I’ve heard it touted as being “like an Earl Grey you can wear” and other similarly hyperbolic claims, and, well... if I ever received a cup of Earl Grey that smelled like this, I would immediately send it back, under the assumption that it had gone off. *** In the end, the best thing that I can say for this is that, once the dry-down hits, it smells a fair bit like Cap d’Antibes, and therefore can be neatly covered up by the generous application thereof. My inner tea drinker viscerally recoils at the idea of ever being faced with a pot of tea emanating this sort of aroma, and I am properly befuddled that so many seem to find it so pleasant. Is it because it was made by Pierre Bourdon? If so, I can only shake my head in disappointment – better noses than he have created worse stinkers than this one, and he is not infallible, either (lookin’ at you, “Individuel”). I am going to try to let this sit on my skin for another hour or so, and sincerely hope it turns into something worthy of the praise that it has received – but I’m about 2 hours in, so I don’t have particularly high hopes. Oh, well. They can’t all be winners, I guess, and I have the perfect antidote waiting in the wings. 2/10

This one is being compared to Aventus and Millésime Impérial, here and on various other forums, so I had to investigate. My thoughts on it may change over time. However, my initial impressions are pretty solid. My very first impression, right out of the atomizer, is one of iced black tea (Earl Grey) with bergamot. This is very quickly overtaken by a smokier tone, with a woody birch quality. This opening salvo resolves into a leathery accord, dry and stark, and rather like a toned-down version of Grand Cuir by Parfums Retro. As it dries, the black tea begins to reassert itself, and lingering in the periphery is the bergamot. A gentle white floral chord appears also, very quietly in the background supporting any of the brighter green tones in the tea and fruit (the florals remind me of Ocean Rain by Mario Valentino). It's a fairly direct, simple, and masculine fragrance. In no way does it resemble Millésime Impérial, and to be frank, it doesn't much resemble Aventus, either. I suppose one could argue that the smoky birch-tar element is in the same ballpark as the far drydown of a smoky batch of Aventus, but given there are a number of leathery, birch-laden masculines out there, many of which predated Aventus, I'm not sure why one would go right to an Aventus comparison. That doesn't jump out at me when I smell this. This is greener, a touch fruitier, and the tea is the main element. It's unusual, and smells good, and yes, Pierre Bourdon is the nose. But so what? I fail to see any speculative link to Creed here. With that said, if you're into tea fragrances, and want an austere black tea fragrance with good note separation, ingredient quality, and performance, you could do worse. This is worth a sniff. It's not Bourdon's best by any stretch, but it's very good. Its minimalistic, gem-cut bottle is a bonus.

The Brun is a rare example of a tea accord that is allowed to be front and center with its accompaniments in the periphery rather than vying for the spotlight. Pierre Bourdon (who we know as the mastermind behind Kouros, Cool Water, and the "ghost perfumer" for Creed) demonstrates a welcome restraint here, enhancing this tea with flourishes of almost soapy melon, a sheer orange blossom, and most notably a violet. This violet is what pushes the tea accord forward and fifteen minutes in, wins best supporting actor as it elevates the smoky aromatics of tea leaves. As it mellows into its heart, its rendered into a wet, juicy, smoky fougere: here, we get a suggestion of that Bourdon's infamous signature pineapple, but it is an undercurrent, elevating the tea even further (tea is notoriously a note that can bury itself and get lost in fragrance compositions). If there was a black tea-scented Pre de Provence soap, I imagine it would smell like this. By the time it's dried down to a skin scent, the subtle smokiness lingers with amber tones and your-skin-but-better musk. It is surely one of the better tea fragrances I've experienced, and I thoroughly enjoy wearing it.

Aromatic spicy fern with tea accord. A lovely, classy, discreet and masculine fragrance. I can definitely smell the tea and musk as well as the orange blossom, but I didn't know it had bergamot, pineapple, melon, and all those other 'masculine florals' of lavender, jasmine, lily of the valley, and violet as well as cinnamon and cardamom. In effect, it smells a lot like wearing a sophisticated, spicy, musky, Earl Grey Tea. The base of this fragrance is cumin, smoky Chinese lapsang souchong tea, amber, vanilla and musk. Recommended for warmer weather, balmy evenings and definitely for the office and boardroom, a suit, job interview and perhaps even a long flight somewhere! Definitely not a casual scent for the boys, partying nor hiking, etc .... The drydown is sexy, sensual and close to the skin. I kept sniffing myself after wearing it! It's nice to be near a man wearing this ultra-sophisticated and classic fragrance! For more information of the talented nose Jean-Charles Brosseau, check the website at www.jcbrosseau.com

Throwing my hat into the ring to disagree with the negative comments. I can't believe we're smelling the same fragrance (maybe the bottles had gone off?) because this scent is phenomenal. It's Bourdon through & through - highly original, well blended and borrowing heavily from the DNA of his Creed fragrances. The 'smokey Millesime Imperial' is absolutely what I get, it has the same fruity melon vibe, florals and even a similar saltyness running through the base. Where The Brun diverges is indeed the tea note which becomes darker and more prominent as it settles. But it's a smooth, mellow, black tea sort of smell, complimenting the fruits perfectly. Pleasing from top to bottom - fresh, clean in an almost soapy way and glad i took the plunge on a bottle.