More Beauty Than Beast

This review is based on the EDP concentration. More Beauty Than Beast EDP opens with a powdery blood-orange accord which reminds me of fruity bubblegum flavour and orange flavoured effervescent tablet. It gives me a bizarrely artificial feeling, yet I smell a similar accord in Aftelier Candide. The fragrance then changes in an incremental manner, but these small course corrections will eventually cumulate into a quite different stage of its development. At first, an inky and animalic indolic jasmine starts to bloom on vines of amber, warmed up by clove and cinnamon. The whole effect is not dissimilar to Tauer Le Maroc pour Elle to me. The next stage is about 2 hours in, when buttery ylang takes the front place of jasmine. This buttery ylang together with the spicy, slightly meaty and incense-y clove and the tender amber base, makes an opulent, sensual floriental. I’d been struggling with a few ylang-vanilla/amber fragrances, as sometimes they evoke a plastic sweetness to me. Clove can also smell metallic or plastic to me in certain compositions. But with More Beauty Than Beast, I indeed get the most beauty out of these wonderful notes, without any monstrous (according to my taste) quality. The ylang eventually fades into an buttery undertone after about 6 hours, and MBTB is now mostly a vanilla and incense-y amber in the far dry down. It projects a bit further than a few Rising Phoenix oils, but the longevity is short of 8 hours, while the oils all stretch to at least 10 hours. Even I find the opening weirdly like artificial flavour, it's not unpleasant to me, and I thoroughly enjoy every bit of the following stage, especially when the glory of this buttery ylang and fuzzy warm clove reigns the composition. All the ingredients work in harmony and intertwine among themselves, without turning the composition into a muddled mess. I'd definitely recommend it to those who are looking for a buttery ylang, or a luxurious, spicy warm floriental in general.

Juicy red liquid...and what I get in the opening is literally fruit punch! We call it Glühwein in germany and the opening notes are like a good home made glühwein, with a lot of orange and blood-orange juice (the note here is listed as blood-grapefruit, but I don't know that)and spices. This is rather gourmand to me, but it dries down soon into a lush spicey scent, I get a lot of cinnamon and cloves softened by creamy Ylang and Rose along with Rosewood, the Jasmin I can't smell now. Later on the base notes show up, it turns into a soft vanilla and benzoin, still there's a freshness in this base, might come from the frankincense and civet. I enjoyed this a lot and would wear it in colder weather, the longevity is average, sillage as well, for an all natural ok.

A brand that should be Boycott for their views. Never to be seen in the artisanal spaces.