Rook by Rook

Wow this is a heavy hitting and deep perfume which I can’t stop smelling! Opens with a bit of wood smoke and spice then develops into a very sultry and woody smell almost medicinal but in a good way. In my opinion a very masculine scent more suited to the darker months - top of my list of recent new smells - up there with Into The Void by Juliette has a Gun but a more affordable price point- highly recommended

The opening is super smokey, almost overpowering so - but then I start to detect Ginger and something else sweet cutting through stopping this from becoming too heavy. Within about 10 mins, this becomes a beautiful smokey incense with a slight powdery floralness ontop of a soft leather. The Dry down is still beautifully smokey, with a tiny bit of skank, nothing unpleasant - it's quite alluring

A diplomat dressed up as a punk rocker! Beneath a pouty, moody, smoky exterior this has a rather charming and refined woody-floral lurking beneath its studded leather jacket. I'm a billowing smoke fiend so never found the opening too much - for me, though certainly there in thick screens, it's much more resinous/aromatic than the Beaufort range's steely metallic gun smoke. Perfectly unisex for those who love a smouldering-incense-woods-tobacco thing, the animalics aren't bitter or overwhelming and the violet and ylang give the odd flash of sweeter, fresher air in between. It's very much in the Coze - Black Afgano - ELDO Rien sort of mood, absolutely loaded with punchy, dark, tough ingredients, though this is paradoxically much lighter and more transparent than any of those scents. At times it's almost a heady floral, reminding me (really weirdly) of the bottom end of Zoologist's Nightingale or Moth. Those are a lot of heavy hitters for Rook to be sidling up to. And there's the rub - for me, only, its performance doesn't quite back up its attitude. Now depending on your needs, that might be a good thing (Black Afgano makes me heave, and though I love Coze it can be a choker, as can Rien.) This one does let you breathe, and after the first 10 minutes I doubt anyone could object to it. So is it really the bad boy it purports to be at first? Fades quite fast on me, though never unpleasantly, and becomes startlingly milder and more floral, almost soapy (?!?!) in one phase, and though every step of the journey is great, that's kind of disorienting. I like it just fine, but want it to butch up a little and stay tougher, longer. Very decent value for money and an honest, creative, robust fragrance from a brave new house, though. Do give it a go if this sounds like your bag - I can see it making a lot of new friends.

Interesting. A violent pyroclastic opening. The gates of hell are ripped opened. Once it settles then you start to pick out the incense, Myrhh and tobacco. The spices peek through along with the animalic notes. It is now a little warmer and resinous. A little ylang starts to surface and the fresh ginger and vetiver cuts through now stopping it becoming too heavy. It gradually becomes a spent firework that becomes warmer and more resinous with time as the ginger and vetiver wain. This s the perfect scent for wearing on bonfire night. It has that cordite ambience. Its very unisex. I get good longevity and reasonable sillage.

This is a fragrance with an intense smoke, incense with synthetic Oud opening. It mellows in about 30 minutes, then 2-3 hours later it’s a whisper of its former self. Before the dry down arrived, I smelled a bit of rubber, like smoke from burning tires. It wasn’t toxic death though, as spices mixed with the scent and made it weirdly interesting. I like Rook with all the different notes mixing and morphing. Last time I wore this perfume was in the summer. It was a hot August day and Rook bitch slapped me in the face. You have been warned, this is for cold weather only.

dark, dry, tarry, leather-y. not a new concept but I can smell quality ingredients. lovers of Comme de Garcons, Black Afgano and likes will be pleased. think it's a good value for the price if you like the concept.

Smoke and violet. I'm surprised more people don't mention the very Dior Fahrenheit-esque violet / violet leaf note.

I got this sample a few weeks back. I put it on, it had a scent of galbanum, which always reminds me of diaper cream, sometimes I like it, sometimes not. Overall it was a negative. So about a week ago, I bought a soap at Whole Foods called Grandpa's Pine Tar. It is extremely smoky, a burned leaves soap that was so strong I had to hide it from my partner who complained about the smell. At $5 a bar, it left an all day odor on me that was quite a bargain compared to Rook. Today I once again sampled Rook. It reminded me of Grandpa's Pine Tar, with that smoke smell. But it was, in all fairness, tempered by the soft, baby cream notes that waft through the composition along with the burned leaves. Do I like it enough to buy a full bottle? No, not at all. It's just odd enough to sample, finish it, and never wear it again.

I'd love to like something avant garde like this but it's not for me. Too smoky, dirty and animalic for me. If you can make it work, good luck to you but I can't pull this off, too weird.

This is my unedited notes that I jotted down after spraying this straight on skin this morning: 0 mins: Ylang Ylang and faint incense smoke with animalic funk and fern/moss. Smells like Fenjal that's been rubbed into beef in a herb garden, or sitting in a fenjal bubble bath in the middle of the forest and rubbing mince into myself. 5 mins: Animalic note right now is underneath the sharp florals and spices. And it's a fresh tannery skins kind of funk - fatty leather and slightly phenolic - slight incense smell appearing 15 minutes on (on skin) Fenjal & cardamom in the background with faint smell of meat juice on part of your hand that you missed when you washed. Still getting "ferns" - actually, more conifer (probably from the guaiac wood/vetiver/cardamom). Impression: "someone washed with floral bath oil and then went walking through a pine forest after working in a tannery" 60 minutes: I can't pick up "smoke" - there's woods and spices (i can definitely pick out cardamom, but it's combination with the other elements is giving me pine needles / sap. Oh, actually it could be kind of a frankincense/amber on hot charcoal kind of smell. 50/50. The animalic funk underneath has definitely turned into what I can only describe as "clean genital skin" Then there's a lot of note and chemical breakdowns but impression at 2 hours: "a dirty weekend in a wooden chalet in a Scandinavian forest, the venison pie I've just made is cooking and I've just gone to play with my partners boobs while she's in the Fenjal bath.....and I'm going to wash my hands in her bath water at the same time" This dropped to a strong skin scent after 2 hours. It's a well structured and extremely eccentric composition, more akin to wearing an art installation than a wearable fragrance (IMHO). Of the two fragrances I've tried by Rook, I'd definitely put them into the "weird uncle who only appears at weddings and funerals" scent classification. Overall verdict of Rook: "Dirty weekend at Nana Olga's cabin"

This isn't a new concept, but there's no denying the skill of its maker or the quality of the ingredients. The first hit is powerfully smokey - so much so that I think my nose was left reeling, and there was little else I could pick out other than smoke! That is a indictment of me and not the perfume, though. Lovers of CdG, Beaufort London, Imaginary Authors and Rouge Bunny Rouge should definitely check this (and the other perfumes by Rook) out. Perfume has excellent longevity and moderate sillage. All the perfumes by this house are very competitively priced considering their quality and - especially - in comparison to their competition. It's well worth signing up to the Rook newsletter as there are regular special offers when purchasing directly from them online.

Goes on birch tar with that plastic edge I sometimes get with it, a pine candle scent and marked animalic notes. Dries down leathery animal, very warm body notes. Not bad, but doesn’t smell sexy in any way to me, more like someone living on the street without benefit of sanitation services; it's more long-unwashed human than sexy musk. If the pine was stronger, it could be the living embodiment of a Green Man or Wildermann archetype, but the pine doesn’t last long enough. I had to scrub it. Hours later, the scrubbed spot smells great, a woody, green outdoor forest scent. On a retry, it was almost completely unwashed dirty human and was intolerable. It does last long and is hard to scrub off, for what that's worth.

Image if someone took Macbeth (the whole play, I mean, not just the character) and someone found a way of distilling it into a fragrance? This is Rook by Rook: dark, brooding, saturnine, like a raven above the sooty wafts of the weird sisters' cauldron. Or perhaps like Macbeth himself, as his thoughts grow dark... "Light thickens, and the crow Makes wing to th' rooky wood. Good things of day begin to droop and drowse; Whiles night’s black agents to their preys do rouse." Rook is like a night at the theatre or, if you have Gothic tendencies, every night. Which is why why I'd never wear this fragrance in daylight hours and why, the next time I see Macbeth, this will be what I'll be wearing.

Please give this one the chance to settle on your skin, first initial spray, is a very smokey incense, a little bit overpowering BUT ten minutes in, it softens and leaves a lovely smokey tobacco scent with a hint of vetiver. If you are into your incense frags. This is a must try! It's blended very smoothly and is very pleasant on drydown. Look foward to trying the rest of my samples. 8/10

I've just received my sample and I can tell you that this is something incredibly special. Usually a fragrance will bring up a memory. Smelling this brought up many at the same time and combined them all together! A full bottle will be on my shopping list! Well done Rook, well done! Nadeem, you are superbly talented!

Had I ever washed my hair with 1980s Vosene shampoo whilst standing in a burning shed, it would take me right back.