A Day In My Life

I love this fragrance, but I’ll let others speak for how great it smells. Instead, I want to talk about the bottle because it needs to be addressed. This fragrance comes with a plastic cap, a glass bottle, and a leaky diffuser. It just sits on my cabinet — never exposed to extreme heat or direct sunlight — yet the diffuser still occasionally leaks. The worst part is that the juice (alcohol) slowly dissolves the cap and creates gooey, sticky black residue. The cap appears to be two-layered, and they likely used some kind of black adhesive to hold it together. The alcohol breaks it down over time. I ended up throwing the cap away. I know Mark Buxton himself dislikes cheap-feeling bottles, which makes it even more surprising that this issue hasn’t been fixed. I really wish this came in the freedom collection bottles.

One of my personal go to fragrances, i purchased a sample while purchasing Message in a Bottle (now message in a perfume). At the first opening it smelt interesting but didn’t seem like it was anything impressive, BUT then dry down with the protruding rosy floral-ness was just awesome! and it really became a must have in my perfume cabinet! Mark is one of my favorite perfumers and in my opinion this is a master piece.

This is so interesting! A refreshing green and even aquatic take on rose. The utter opposite of the stifling Opus XII by Amouage. I get a crisp breeze in a rose garden next to a swimming pool in Monaco. I could see it leaning male for some. It’s almost like a rosy summertime fougere. I’ll be wearing this to the next pool party I attend.

Absolutely love this. Usually not a big fan of rose on myself, but this one really impressed me. Spicy/peppery rose with a hint of mandarin

Super strong orange & rose. Perfect for summer!

Bitter green rose. Smells very natural to me and possible leans masculine, though your opinion on florals may vary. I think this would work on a hot summer day. Take Hermann a mes Cotes (minus the wet soil/menthol) and add the green dewy grass/twigs notes Buxton uses in Emotional Drop. Very fleeting. Gone in the blink of an eye on my skin. 8.0/10

This is some of Mark Buxton's best work, but also a complete departure from what he's known for. A Day in My Life is loud, yet soft, plush, floral and musky. There is no iso e super or woody amber in sight. This fragrance is so unique, that I have very little to compare it to. There's so much going on, yet I can probably summarize my general experience to the smell of roses and concrete on a cloudy day. Besides that musky industrial rose accord, there's some violet, lavender absolute, orange blossom, iris, black and pink pepper, a hidden basil and leather note, some patchouli, and then a fougere base of labdanum, coumarin and sandalwood. But really, what I smell is like I said earlier: roses and concrete (due to a mega dose of cashmeran, which is musky, salty, industrial-smelling). All in all, the quality is top tier, and it's a beautiful, saturnine fougere with rose at the helm. Sometimes it's bright and hopeful, but other times feels kind of goth and moody, and suits rainy days best. Reminds me of humid city air on a cloudy day, but with beams of sunlight breaking through the clouds. I guess you could say it has a similar vibe to Narciso Rodriguez for Him (grey bottle), but here, Buxton puts the emphasis on rose instead of violet, and lightens the mood. In some ways, it also shares a mood and style with Or Black by Pascal Morabito. In closing: it leans masculine, it's a rose fougere. Will turn heads. Very special. Sometimes it smells like it's from the 80s (but not dated smelling at all), other times it smells like a rose fragrance that should be released 10 years from now. Lasts for days on clothes. 10/10

This is a slighly spicier/peppery version of Veronique Gabbai Noire de Mai.