Imperial Santal

Almost old school masculine fragrance. I can easily imagine a high profile guy wearing this. He's polished in many respects. He knows his business. Well blended citrus and aromatic notes on a classic base. It doesn't really evolve much and apparently that's the sign of a well made fragrance. It's classy and expensive smelling. Almost soapy. This has powerful sillage in this 24 degree room.

Years ago someone gave me a cedar fragrance by Micallef that I really liked (the name eludes me but it included a number) so I had high expectations of this, which were greatly inflated by the lofty hubris of the name "Imperial Santal". Curious that the reviewer below found this to be "masculine" - my impression is the exact opposite: I found this to be overtly feminine and, for me, utterly unwearable - weirdly sweet, cloying and extremely unpleasant, not remotely regal, let alone "imperial". One word: yuck. Couldn't even give this away, so it became a bathroom deodoriser.

Cold, almost aquatic, hyper-masculine treatment of sandalwood - sadly it doesn't work at all on my skin as the usual warmth and spice of the wood are drowned out by harsher fir balsam and vetiver/grapefruit - so it smells like a rock-hard, very stern older man. A very distinguished and elegant guy no doubt - but not for me. Even as a regular user of 'male' scents and particularly deep-woods ones, this is excessively butch for me. And I can think of a number of more nuanced and welcoming sandalwoods which work well on any gender, priced far below this one. Think Micallef might just not be my bag; its 'women's' scents are usually far too blowsy/girly for me while its male ones always seem a little harsh and seriously acrid on my skin. They're just so binary! (Yet the house also makes the supreme Gaiac scent, maybe the best treatment of palo santo, my favourite note, I've ever smelled.) Therefore: if you are a man's man looking for a man's man's sandalwood fragrance which will never ever grow powdery, coconutty or rosy, and want it with a specifically blue/outdoorsy tang, this could work. But even then, I'd recommend CDG's Bleu Santal as something which does the same job, but more gently and for less money.