Prakt

I have a bit of a crush on this perfume house now! So far I've tried En, Prakt, Fröjd and Sadel and each of them has been a "wow" in different ways. Prakt opens on a very green, almost savoury note of cut rhubarb stalks. This is then supplemented by a very realistic blackcurrant leaf note, and a minty tingle that gives an impression of bright, vegetal freshness. I swear I can also smell the tiniest hint of tomato leaf, even though it's not listed. A soft, musky scent is layered over all this, creating the illusion of the smell of soil after rain. The "garden" inspiration absolutely comes through, and quite a few people around me have actually made comparisons to that effect when they smelled Prakt (even though they know nothing about it): "you smell like summer on my grandparents' farm" was my favourite. After a few hours of wear, the perfume mellows out: the greenness never recedes, but it feels warmer, a little less sharp. The soil note becomes more present (I can see where the people complaining that this ends up only smelling like dirt are coming from), a gentle woodiness appears, and I can also detect a strong apple note. I must say that my skin amplifies apple notes to an unbelievable degree, so your mileage may vary on this, but at least on me the apple is unmistakeable: it's very fresh, a little sour, a little bitter, and it has a fleshy, crunchy character. It feels like you were in your garden harvesting rhubarb and pulling weeds and you decided to take a break and pick a slightly under-ripe apple as a snack. As you bite into it, you can smell the rhubarb stalks, crushed vegetation, the soil on your hands, and of course the apple itself. I can't say I specifically smell blackcurrant or gooseberry, but there's a tartness there for sure, as well as a kind of puckering, tannic edge that does remind me of these fruits. It's more about a sensation than a distinct smell, in my opinion. There is also a high likelihood that those notes, which are perhaps a little more delicate, are being cannibalized by the weirdly amplified apple, to the point that all that remains of them is a kind of olfactory ghost. The note pyramid is bound to elicit comparisons with Enchanted Forest by The Vagabond Prince, but in my opinion (and admittedly based on memory alone as I don't have Enchanted Forest on hand) they are very different perfumes: Enchanted Forest is headier, and as far as I recall has a jammy, syrupy, almost alcoholic facet that is completely absent here. Enchanted Forest is, well, about an enchanted forest; Prakt is about your childhood garden. I would like to sample both side by side anyway, out of curiosity, but based on what I remember I don't think they're very similar. L'Ombre dans l'Eau, the other mandatory comparison, might perhaps be closer in feel, but the rose note takes it in a very different direction. It comes across as moodier, more solemn (dare I say a little bit goth?) I've always imagined a garden overrun with brambles when I smell it, something beautiful but just the tiniest bit unsettling (what is that shadow in the water?) Prakt will not take you there. It's joyous and vibrant, which of course must not be confused with "simple" or "boring". In short, Prakt is the memory of working in the rhubarb patch of a beloved garden on a summer day. It's a lot more green than it is fruity, which is something to take into account. It's also very, very realistic, which, again, might be a plus or a minus depending on your personal tastes. There's no attempt to make vegetal smells more perfume-like or more cosmetic; rather it's a celebration of how beautiful they are on their own, with only some clever puzzle work to make sure they are juxtaposed in ways that show them to their best advantage. For sure one of my new favourites.

I’d like to first thank Svensk Parfym for the opportunity to test their first six fragrances. I'm surprised by how much I enjoy Prakt, as I usually struggles with the two prominent notes here - blackcurrant and blackcurrant leaves: the intense greenness of the blackcurrant leaves in Diptyque L'Ombre dans L'Eau is too fierce for my taste, while the jammy sweetness of blackcurrant in many fruity gourmand fragrances is too overwheming for my liking. But in Prakt, the crunchy, vibant vegetal greenness and the ripe (yet not jammy at all) musky sweetness of blackcurrant and its leaves, along with the earthy tartness of rhubarb, are in perfect balance. And the fragrance really conjures a vivid image of fresh berries and rhubarb to me! Prakt turns slightly more woody in the dry down and loses a bit of the dewy feeling in the opening, but it mostly remains this natural, realistic fresh berries and lush vegetations throughout its development and never disintegrate into an abstract clean white musk like so many green fragrances with a promising opening do. I sometimes detect a tomato leaf note, mostly because the vegetal, slightly earthy and wet soil-like greenness and fruity tart-sweetness have minor variation in proportions. If I spray a larger quantity on one sport, there's also a slight burnt note that I encountered and struggled with in certain blackcurrant-heavy fragrances, but it doesn't bother me that much as long as I don't indulge myself too much with the spray. Prakt has a moderate sillage and lasts about 9 hours on my skin. I agree with many previous reviews that Prakt is a very evocative fragrance perfectly capturing the joy of picking berries and rhubarb in a lush garden at the end of summer. I've been searching on and off for a green blackcurrant fragrance that has the natural lush greenness but not too forceful, has the mouthwatering musky sweetness of the berries but not too sugary, and remains layered and engaging without falling apart into a nebulous clean laundry base. Prakt is pretty close to my ideal blackcurrant fragrance. Based on my personal experience with Prakt, I would highly recommend it to fans of blackcurrant and green fragrances.

This amazing fragrance starts with a very natural and realistic sharp, green scent of black currant leaves. It smells kind of like you are rubbing a bunch of leaves between your hands and then you put the hands under your nose and inhale the scent. It also has a very exciting tart scent that I guess is coming from black currant, gooseberry and rhubarb. I can't say that I can sense that it is those tree notes that I get, but it has that lovely tart feeling that you can find in both black currants, goosberries and rhubarbs. This tart scent enhances the sharp green scent and gives it a completely new fruity dimension. Later during the day a slightly dirty scent appears behind all of the green stuff and that makes it feel like you are in a summer garden with newly planted berry bushes. Over it all there is also a wet feeling that comes from the "rain note" that makes is smell like it has just been raining, so all the leaves on the bushes are covered in raindrops that sparkles in the sunlight. This is a very interresting and realistic fragrance that I think some people might have a hard time to like, since it has a really sharp green scent. Just like black currant leaves actually has... But I love it and I am very happy that I ordered a bottle of it! I love when fragrances are so realistic that they really paints a picture in your mind, like this one does.

I went straight here to tell everyone of this scent. This smells of my childhood home and the garden with gooseberries and blackcurrants. It smells like it’s been a hot day and the warm rain came towards the end of the day. Everything is steaming with smell, the currants, the apple trees, the grass. It’s so photorealistic that it took me to that place in my memory straight away. The only other time I experienced this feeling was with Ambre Cashmere by Nikolai that took me to my childhood Christmas home. Now that my feelings are out, let’s talk about how it smells on my skin, and it’s just lovely. It starts with rhubarb and bushes of gooseberries and blackcurrants. It’s very warm from the sun scent. The blackcurrant stays, and then the scent transforms into this wet and rainy apple tree. It’s more on refreshing side. After some time all the plants mix on my skin into this general fruit orchard (for me smells like south of Poland orchard). It ends with sunset warmth again. This first smelling has been very dramatic for me, and I think it’s going to be my very special spring summer scent.

Prakt takes me back to lost summers in my grand parents lush garden in the country side, where we kids picked fresh gooseberries from the bushes, and my grandma made the best lemonades of rhubarbs and black currant from her own back yard. Prakt takes all those memories and puts them in a bottle. The quality of the natural ingredients used here are undeniable. One spray is as if you held all the ingrediants in your hands and smushed them all together. You can really feel the berries, rhubarb and cassis teasing your nose. All the notes blend so well together and creates a different kind of scent that is truly faithful to a swedish summer in the country side. And like the other fragrances from Svensk Parfym, this is no weak sauce. Its easy to tell that the concentration of fragrant oils is really high. Prakt projects and lasts like few other summer scents.