Shine Sun

Honestly this one smells great. Very uplifting and zesty. Perfect for warm weather and signature worthy. You have to love grapefruit or it can come off as a bit sour. The knock on it is at the price, tons of well known houses give you the same thing but in 100 ml instead of 30ml such as Issey Miyake,Ferrari and Ferragamo to name a few. This is the 2nd that I have tried from the house and so far am neutral at best so far but have 8 more to go.

Is this supposed to smell like Tygar? For some reason, Bvlgari's Tygar is suddenly getting hyped like crazy all over the place so I, naturally, became interested in buying a decant or clone. Then I looked at the notes of Tygar and realized they are almost identical to the notes of this! Which is really sad cause I was legit gonna buy some of Tygar, or Alexandria's Black Panther. But now I'm not so sure... Since my last review of Shine Sun was pretty harsh, I decided I wanted to give this frag another honest chance to grow on me. So, 2 sprays to the chest and.....I kid you not, my nose was burning! The horrible, harsh chemical opening was literally causing a burning sensation in my nostrils!! Yuck! Then the fragrance turns into a weird mossy, swampy/earthy scent. I don't know how else to describe it, but suffice it to say, it isn't pleasant. And I doubt the liquid has gone rancid (although it sure smells like it has) because all my Andraus bottles are stored in the same location and only this one has this problem! So idk. Somehow this fragrance now smells worse than when I first smelled it. Anyway, because this hobby is a full-blown addiction, I still might spring for that Tygar juice....if only to determine whether this abomination is a clone of that. Almost 2 years later and Shine Sun still gets a 0 out of 10 from me in every category.

The grapefruit note seems to be one of the trickiest to work with in perfumery, at least in my own (very limited) experience. Judging from the reviews left on this site for scents like Adam Levine or Perry Ellis for Men, if not done right, it is dangerously easy for the grapefruit note to make a fragrance smell like cat piss. Unfortunately, Shine Sun is definitely NOT grapefruit done right. Even though I didn't mind either Adam Levine or Perry Ellis, I can't help but notice that this 100% smells like cat piss. I'm not even hating on Samy Andraus like some folks on here seem to be -- I own almost every fragrance he has released and genuinely LOVE a few of them (Forte di Acqua, Aoud Space, Imperial Leather) -- but this one here is awful!