Frankfurt Kitchen

I half expected this to smell like hot dogs cooking, but instead it starts out smelling like dried peaches, nuts, and coffee. This has to be one of the most explicitly dried peach-scented perfumes I’ve ever smelled. At first it seems like there’s not much sillage, but within 10 minutes I start noticing a thick cloud of prickly green tea accord that stays separate from the main peachy attraction on my skin. I could do without the tea, since it seems at odds with the rest of the composition, not even attached to it. After a couple of hours the peach merges into a powerful resinous base that I think is a mix of black agar and evergreen resin, maybe fir, pine, and a mild labdanum that gives it just the slightest touch of the animalic. At this stage it would be fair to say I love it, since I love just about anything that’s super-resinous. There’s a fair amount of sillage and it lasts 6-8 hours on skin. FK gets high marks for originality and for the lovely, assertive drydown. Definitely worth a sniff.

At first I wasn't sure about this one. Strong mint then coffee and gourmand notes - it's like brushing your teeth before breakfast and feeling that weird taste in your mouth drinking coffee and orange juice. But I'm really warming to it - all the other notes are very SL Arabie without the strong cloves (which is the note that put me off.) The coffee, and strangely the mint, once subsided acts to really highlight and contrast the other notes. Somehow it works! Very rich juice, dark amber colour, I love it. Once the mint dries down it's all about those sweet chewy dried fruits, resins and honey.