Louis

Amazing scent! It’s a very strange combination of notes that weirdly smells very alluring. I can feel peppery and aromatic notes mixed with some super zesty citruses and a touch of soapy floral notes. Besides there is some nice mossy and balsamic base but still quite fresh one (maybe I can also feel some piny undertones as well). Splendid! Follow me on IG: scent.guide

It is shocking that none of the comments below, talks about the scent in relation to perfumer's ideas on race. To be honest, I think this fragrance smell like toilet cleaner liquid. Which it smells "Clean & fresh" to me. This work is enigmatic and very bold!

when you think it's again the same boring masculine type of perfume but you can't stop thinking why do i like it so much? and yes, the quality is everything. Zero cheap woody-amber base ... nothing alike these cheap notes who compose 50% of a Bleu de Chanel or Sauvage de Dior and so many (the basic male who plays at who stink the strongest in the locker room). Here you can fully enjoy a real base in the sense of classic French perfumery. It's a spicy (cardamon) fresh aromatic with a velvety note of iris who lasts forever. The base is wet dream of clean musk ...and suddenly you ask yourself why all these pseudo de luxe brand are not able to do (or even try) as good at this one.

A very nice aromatic fragrance, at the same time sweet, woody, spicy/floral and without the classic pitfall of having a shaving cream aspect. The very fir/alcohol top notes rapidly soften to a more balmy/savory aspect, all gently. The few minutes after the spray offer a completely floral and soft universe, almost completely freed from the masculine and spicy notes of the beginning. It is at this point that the notes of ferula and orange blossom are introduced, and the opening on this completely different panorama is surprising, to say the least. A nice composition in two steps, then.

The most conventional Zoo frag I’ve tried. Upfront garrigue aromatics, creates a clean edge along where other ingredients, high and low, align. Ambrox/IES/musk wallpaper. Warm, herbal, aquatic all-at-once. Dries down into more of a normie perfume pretty quickly, revealing a lavender-ambrox-bergamot triad. At the end reminds me of Fahrenheit. I actually really enjoyed this. Beautiful composition.

The opening of Louis on me, is quite reminiscent of a lot of commercial men's sports cologne, the kind of assertively fresh aquatic and vaguely metallic citrus-y note not unlike that of dihydromyrcenol. I'm not much of a fan of this type of opening, but fortunately, Louis has a few engaging elements up its sleeve. Underneath the sporty mist, there's a subtle oily green and chocolate-y nuance from galbanum, a discreet melon-like suave fruitiness, and most prominently a spicy cumin note. I personally find the cumin note here rather woody, and not particularly evocative of body odour. Therefore, it adds an unexpected and interesting twist to the otherwise routine fresh fougere, without appearing overly dissonant. With time, the fresh aquatic opening note completely wears off, while the delicate sweet spicy coolness of clove becomes more noticeable, as well as an almost waxy, lipstick-like texture of orris provides a bit more heft to the overall fresh scent. The combination of cumin and orris here, reminds of that in Francesca Bianchi Under My Skin and Jean-Michel Duriez Seine Amoureuse, but much less complex and more lean and airy. It's as if diluting the cumin + orris core of those two perfumes, then mixing it with the herbal, transparent clove and orris of Slumberhouse Grev. Louis mostly maintains this softly cumin-y and herbal orris skin scent and turns more and more amorphous with time, but there's an unexpected surge of beet-like earthiness towards the dry down after about 5-6 hours, and occasionally an almost cotton candy-like sweetness which might stem from orange blossom. The sillage is moderate to soft, and it lasts around 8 hours on my skin. Based on my personal preferences, Louis is not really my cup of tea. Besides the "sport cologne" opening that bothers me, I also prefer the richer, more layered treatment of cumin and orris in Under My Skin and Seine Amoureuse, as well as the more ethereal Grev. But as a commercial sports cologne with a gentle cumin touch as a twist, Louis is quite adequate.

The Zoo perfumes are often very classic, traditional-style at first smell. But very forward and innovative on closer inspection. Louis is a great example of this. It is a very familiar traditional masculine style with a slight talcum powdery, dressed up, suit and tie vibe like you just stepped out of the back of a Lincoln Town Car with polished shoes and a manicure. But the quality, staying-power, and technology of an everlasting freshness far exceeds the many other masculine fragrances out there that offer the same style. Louis would make a great gift for any man who favors tried and true masculine compositions (Brut, Azzaro Pour Homme...etc.). It would be really interesting to see how a connoisseur of this style would rate Louis in comparison to the others they wear.

The cumin in here is in my opinion ''the twist'' of this scent. The opening is aromatic, slightly herbal, and powdery. It's nicely blended and the orris is also noticeable. However, the cumin in here takes the heart to the well known BO territory. I can tolerate cumin if it's done well (as in APLS for example), but here it emits a sweat like accord which isn't the most pleasant. Because of this reason, I'm not really liking this one, but I do have to say that apart from the cumin, the rest of the composition is nice, albeit fairly straightforward. Its semi-fresh woody base becomes a bit sweeter later on, but that's about it. Performance is decent with average longevity. 6,5/10