Citadelle

Raw Spirit fragrances have my heart right now but this particular perfume is my true love. Citadelle has made me fall hard and I truly can't get enough. It is very dry, rooty, clean, and totally unsweet. The rind of the lemon seems almost abrasive because it has zero of the fruits pulp to sweeten. You can smell the rind being pulled back from the fruit with that slight citrus mist effervescing. The bergamot too is full of bitter rind blending seamlessly with the vetiver and cedarwood. Daisyvision hit the nail on the head about the rain smells. It does have this earth-laden dirtiness flitting about. I do not smell pear anywhere on me or my boyfriends skin but it is probably balancing out the severity of the dirty vetiver. Citadelle is dirt-root-citrus perfection and I hope to own it forever. It is so short-lived ... It might last 3-4 hours before I have to reapply. Raw Spirit is aptly named. Totally organic, nearing undone fragrances with such spirit.

Like all Raw Spirit fragrances, Citadelle will easily transport you to another place entirely. Much like with "Summer Rain", Citadelle has a gloomy, musty quality that smells like rain and petrichor. It's like being in the middle of the woods after a good rain - you can smell the trees, the rain, and the fresh crisp air. It smells less like a perfume/fragrance, and more like an environment, as strange as that is to say! Citadelle has got to be one of the best vetiver fragrances I've had the pleasure of smelling. The Raw Spirit line hasn't failed to impress me yet, and this is another unique and enticing fragrance in the line up. It really is "raw", and earthy and just.. refreshing. It really is refreshing. This is an utter beauty. I'd tell you to check it out, but do yourself a favor and check out the entire Raw Spirit line!

Raw Spirit favors vetiver-heavy fragrances, and this is the best of them. It's a treat for lovers of true vetiver, in all of its bitter, grassy, earthy glory. The floral and spice notes compliment the main star beautifully, and the whole composition is tart, green, and aromatic. Citadelle is unabashedly "natural" smelling - it foregrounds the scent of verdent earth and wild grass and flowers. But it also has the refinement of true perfumery, its notes combined to create more than the sum of its parts.

I much prefer the overall application of vetiver in this over Bijou Vert, Raw Spirit's other vetiver-centric offering. Here it's smoky and drier/airier. It holds it's own against the citruses a little better. The lemon dances on the edge of taking over on my skin but it remains a dance and the vetiver always reasserts itself. The scent maintains a nice sweetened woody musk undercurrent throughout the drydown. This holds pretty close to skin for sillage and remains noticeable for about 4 hours.

This is a beautiful combination of woody vertiver and citrus. While not totally unique, I personally don't come across this combo very often, but I really like it. Definitely unisex, it has decent lasting power and sillage. I'm not always into citrus or vertiver separately, but somehow the two together really works for me. I just have a sample, but a bottle may be in my future. Even if you are not always crazy about vertiver and/or citrus scents, this is worth a try.

A subtle, sweet vetyver with herbal nuances. I wouldn't have been surprised at some sage or hay or other provincial field flowers. Might be that tagetes...quite subtle, a little sweet, not really citrussy. One for those who enjoy some nice bitterish herbs with their woodsy vetiver.

So I wondered why the sample smelled so good and the whole bottle smelled... weak? I don't know, but if you decant some of it and set the decant on a windowsill in the sun, it gets pretty good.

I wanted to like this, as I love love love the smell of marigolds, but alas, it was not to be. The wood stays oily and the green notes turn bitter on me, like a perfumed insect poison. A scrubber.

I recently discovered how much I love Vetiver notes when used in certain combinations. This sounded lush and earthy...green but not sweet. I did not expect a tire fire in perfume form. The vetiver is so bitter and acrid here, the tagetes stepping up the antiseptic-ness and astringency of its base. The bergamot and lemon are all pith and peel, bitter, not juicy-sweet. I get no pear, and the musk+oud just lends it a 'wearing a heavy perfume' vibe that thankfully, passes, as it isn't terribly long lived. I suspect my dislike comes far more from the notes not working with my chemistry on my skin rather than any flaw in the fragrance, but this is why I have the fragrance subscription this came from, so I don't feel so bad when trying new things falls flat, and the decants generous enough to trade to someone who can appreciate them. Update: I got to smell my decant on someone who can wear it and I'm jealous! You'd think I sprayed two different bottles, one good, one gone off..absent are the burnt bitter notes my skin brings out, and what remains is an earthy citrus, too dirty to be a 'cleaning lemon' and too fresh to be musty. So it's certainly a try-before-you buy sort of scent. I might give it another shot in different weather and on my clothes, but I suspect I just can't wear it on my skin.

Vetiver is one of my all time favorite, so I wanted to experience how Raw Spirit interpreted this particular note. Here its dry, peppery, slightly smokey and woody. The longer its on, the more the citrus comes out making this somewhat masculine, but this is primarily a vetiver scent. This one checks all the boxes for me: Crisp, well made, good quality, natural smelling, etc. but I don't need to add this to my collection as its not overly distinctive. But if you are in the market for this kind of vetiver fragrance and you see this on sale, it's worth bind buying. I don't need it, but it's damn good.

Strange how differently perfume reacts to various skins. On me Citadelle lasts all day and into the night—my pyjamas all smell good now. The vetiver here is exactly what I'm looking for: expensive soap from the grandmother's bottom cedar drawer, stored with a fur. And yet I also love the petrichor smell, and the clean snip of spice. I received this as a sample and will be buying a bottle right away. And now I'm going to have to try everything else from Raw Spirit.

I ordered a sample pack of Raw fragrances. This one didn't hold its scent for more than a few minutes. The others were as they are presented and smell really good in their own ways. Just surprised that something called Summer Rain would hold a LOT longer than Citadelle. It's just been 15 minutes and this is totally gone.

Nice! Very simple grassy/dried hay vetiver and not much else. Not to be confused with a hay scent; this is wood all the way, but with those vetiver aspects that are grassy-dry. Almost too simple, but very nice and would layer well. The fruits and musk are completely missing on me so far.