Faces of Francis

I’ve been testing a sample of Faces of Francis for a couple of weeks now. To my surprise I have come to love it, and have finally purchased it. It is gourmand, and sweet, which I typically avoid, but the sweetness feels balanced. On my skin it smells softly like almond with a veil of incense, with the incense smell outlasting the initial sweetness and becoming woodier and warmer as the night goes on. Still, it has an ineffable complexity to me. Perfumes for me often conjure a landscape, or a space. The incense note (maybe that’s the grilled pistachio?) conjures a large grand space, though not cold like a cathedral. Rather I picture a warm & ensconced grandiosity, dark wood and red velvet, like an opera house. The scent also gives me an idea of a character, or maybe a scenario; someone elegant, gracious, restrained, even chaste, which somehow makes the scent sexier in a way. This decadent scent is a perfect special occasion winter scent; I plan to wear it to the opera and to old style restaurants. (I can’t imagine wearing this scent in hot weather, although the description given by Vilhelm would make you think it’s a summer scent.) Though it has an ambiguity that works well for any gender, I would be especially intrigued to smell it on a man.

I've tested Drunk Saffron and don't find this similar. I do like this, it has a smoky DNA I get from Dear Polly and Poets of Berlin (love those) but I don't get the same sweetness in this one as I do the other two to balance it out. On my skin it actually reads more masculine. I've asked my hubby to give it a try, I think it's going to turn out beautifully on him! I'm on the fence about this for myself. If anything, I may end up getting the 20ml. EDIT: I tried this a few times, just a little bit on my skin then would wash it off as something "not me". Yesterday, I tried it before the hubby & I hopped in the car and I don't know if it was just the fact that it was like 65 with no humidity or the airflow of the windows down, but this fragrance bloomed into something that it hadn't been the other times before!!! The wafts I was getting was woody, sweet and savory scent. While I still don't think it's anything like BR540 or Drunk Saffron and still very much a relative to Dear Polly, it morphed into a love. I was certain my first FB from this house was going to be Moon Carnival or Dear Polly... C.O Bigelow is having a %20 off $100 and up Labor Day sale so I grabbed a bottle!

To begin with it goes without saying but I’ll still verbalize it:) that clearly all the reviews are subjective to their own experiences of olfactory taste and talent. IMHO when I read reviews of this fragrance, YSL baby cat, Rosendo Mateo 5 - all it makes me think the people who describe rubber and petroleum notes that are repulsive to them simply do not have developed nose to identify the actual fine notes of each fragrance. I adore all of those as well as queen of the night. It is such a loss not to appreciate those masterfully curated fragrances. But again, we all have our own genetical talents, as well as childhood exposure to nature that let us discover and understand more in the world of scents. If you never grew up on a farm or/and gardening for living during summers you’d never be able to identify many many notes. They are unknown. So it goes into the bucket of repulsive. Love this perfume. So complex, mystique and earthy. Not for everyone, especially if your nose is “young”.

Imagine floating in a warm bath of pistachios and cream, then suddenly someone throws you a long, slender, blackened twig. You grip it tightly in your hand and out wafts the aroma of vanilla. You look up as crocus blossoms drift down from above, a red and violet splash of color against the white surface of the tub. Now lower the vanilla bean in your hand into the warm cream bath and there you have Faces of Francis by Vilhelm Parfumarie. Some might be initially turned off by the initial blast of aldehydes, but that passes so quickly and mellows out into the sweet pistachio that sticks to you like baklava on a warm day. Sweet and creamy but not cloyingly sweet and perfect for the spring or fall or winter nights. So versatile that it is unisex for a man who embraces their masculinity but is not defined by it. For a woman, all the time.

I went through a period of wearing this scent to do readings at one of my favorites cafés last October and I decided to wear it again today. There is something bookish and sophisticated about this, but the unique blend of notes adds a playfulness that I just adore. It's sweet but not cloying, warm but assertive, unusual and familiar all at the same time. I don't get much of the toasted quality of the pistachio unless I'm up close to the skin, but this still has a delightful hum, especially in the colder months. As some have mentioned, there is a distinct, almost synthetic rubbery note, perhaps from the aldehydes--I'm not sure because I haven't worn a lot of aldehydic fragrances--but it actually heightens my enjoyment of the fragrance. I was on the fence at first but I've grown to love this in all its bizarre complexity.

Perfumes are like people—you should get to know them first before deciding if you like them or not. I honestly didn’t like this at first, I thought it was too heavy and cloying. I got a 1ml sample for cheap and tried it once before putting it away, fully expecting to never use it again. I tried it on later out of curiosity or boredom, and I started to fall in love with it. I started picking out individual notes. This isn’t really something I would wear unless I’m alone; it’s art to me rather than a perfume. I would never get a full bottle but I wish to always have a sample. It’s so weird. It’s nutty, woody, smoky, delicious and bitter at the same time. It smells like the romanticization of church. That probably doesn’t make sense to you but it makes perfect sense to me.

This is awesome! On my skin this smells like a really sweet and creamy pistachio vanilla cream, with a sprinkle of gingerbread cookies ontop. On some of my peers it smells overly spicy and woody. I love this stuff on me and I bought it right after smelling it. It is really unique and I’ve never smelt anything quite like it. It projects well and I can still smell it on me over 15 hours later, and after a workout. (I did 6-8 sprays) Since it’s so unique, it’s not blind buy safe at all, so as always test it on skin before you commit to a full bottle. Also an old guy at Target said «Man I know you get all the ladies walking around smelling like that!». I never get compliments on my fragrances but this one got me one the first time o wore it out.

My fw26 purchase, it has been decided! Nutty, woody, smoky, sweet. I can pinpoint the majority of notes here and it is such a fun experience. To me it is not cloying at all, it is not a beast mode in terms of projection so its not overpowering. I see how it can be poking someone in the nose tho, but for me its a non issue ( and I kind of like a lil bit of that in this particular fragrance). association: smells like eating pistachio sweets (bastani zaferani) by the fireplace in a creaky old wooden rocking chair, but fresh air is coming into the room and its kind of chilly. I'm just glad its not named "Dubai" at this point

The notes definitely don't match what I'm getting from this which is an exceptional saffron scent with faintest hint of cherry tobacco and a smooth gourmand drydown. If this has ambergris and oud then this is high level blending or dosed low. Smells extremely modern, and gets a bit sweeter in the drydown. Leans slightly 60/40 feminine. Really delicious, interesting, and also has serious curb appeal. Great release. Scent 8.5/10 Performance TBD

I absolutely love this scent. I smelted in London at the Harrods and I noodled on it and noodle on it and noodle on it and thought about it and then I got home from a trip and I smelt shirt that I was wearing when I sprayed it and I was like what is that amazing scent, it’s like nothing you smell before. It’s very smoky interesting people ask you what you’re wearing for sure but it’s a very different site and it’s really really beautiful.

There's something surreal about this scent. I imagine 1900s, zeppelins, laughing men in top hats, Man Ray silent films. Wizard of Oz. Turkish Delight offered by the White Witch in Narnia. Melted clocks in Dali's paintings. Fantastic fragrance, but still unsure if I can wear it. Intoxicating sweetness taken to an absurd level. Love to smell it from a distance.

Although it has no notes of it, I sort of smell almost the cooked smell of currants. I feel like the pistachio and saffron notes lend itself to a very North African cuisine so maybe I'm just thinking of those kinds of ingredients upon smelling it. The aldehyde note really elevates it to something beyond gourmand. It gives so much dimension.

this is so interesting!! the second I smelled it I was like "this reminds me of something..". and then I figured it out. This is literally black phantom by kilian in a bottle. It's like if black phantom and baccarat had a baby. Amazing Don't get any pistachio though

The only fragrance that blew me away after trying 100 others, didn't even intend to buy any at that time. I think ladies would want to eat you up after they smell this on you. If I had to choose between Layton, Angels Share, or Naxos; this would be the one.

“Wow” was my first impression. The compelling thought of blending pistachios and saffron together was absolutely genius. If I haven’t purchased a full bottle of Tony iommi yesterday , this would’ve been the other choice for sure! Overall -9.5/10

Very interesting and unique! Mature, refined and elegant. Spicy, saffron, pistachio, then leather with sweetness and woody oud resins. Definitely not a beginner fragrance and not for blind buy.

Smells like cold pistachios, but in a good way. And to the review below me, please re-smell I dont understand the Mango and Incense lol

Am i the only one getting Fusion Sacrée Obscur Majda Bekkali vibes from it? yeah, i know the perfumer is the same, but still...

I love Goutal's Encens Flamboyant and I like this. It has a little more vanilla sweetness than Goutal.

leathery, smoky oud with smooth, a little bit sweet nutty pistachio. big love! may get a FB

This is so creamy, nuty yet super elegant, a turly powerful blending

I love it. It smells like ginger and dry ice, with pistachio.

Saw the "metallic" note that people voted on here and that got me interested in getting a sample as I love frags with metallic notes. It definitely met my expectations. Comparing the notes now as I look back, it's weird to say this but to me it shares a lot of similarities with Vilhelm's Poets of Berlin. Faces of Francis gives me this airy citrus note, yet there are no citrus notes listed. More specifically, it makes me think of an oranges with a very sharp zest to it. Don't know why. This is the first frag I've tried that has "pistachio" so maybe it's my lack of familiarity with it that makes me misinterpret Faces of Francis, but regardless, it's a fun fragrance. This does fade after 20-30 minutes and then the warm slightly-spicy resins kick in. Overall, from birth to death, the scent is good, but the opening is really the magical part for me. Using up my 2ml sample pretty fast because I keep reapplying it to experience that initial scent. Performance is decent.

The Istanbul Grand Bizarre year 2150. The market stands among a futuristic bustling city. The only things remaining from this ancient towns historic past is this market, the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia. These three standing structures stand among a thousand steel skyscrapers. Yesteryear is gone; Turkey has become a shell of what it once was. I visit this bizarre to try to reclaim its forgotten culture. Among the sterile smell of a new Middle East, I catch the lingering aroma of Saffron and nuts that sit in baskets among the impoverished sellers stands. The smell of spices along the premise of a washed city reminds me of what this place once was. I buy a bag of ruby red saffron from Ahmet, I bury my nose in its vessel cradling the last treasure of its civilization.

On my skin there's something beautifully crystalline about how this feels and smells, like peering into what an opal might smell like, or would smell like if we gave opals a chance to assign themselves a scent. Definitely not a gourmand for me but there is an airy bouncy sweetness that would remind you of the whipped cream facet of Fat Electrician. Definitely interesting and fascinating, and a very transparent yet layered interpretation of something aldehydic, if that makes sense. Update after wearing for a while: It makes me nauseous! Somehow with me as a person I didn't feel too comfortable wearing it. It's still a beautiful scent! I suppose just not for me style-wise and physiologically

This is an intriguing one bought on a whim with a Liberty coin (voucher) as a treat. The pistachio note made me do it, but I sit in the fence about the saffron which tends to be the case in its eating too. BUT this strongly evokes med islands, both drifting on the ferry into the Greek idyll of Aegina with its pines and pistachios, as well as the mysterious sulphuric heights of Vulcano off the coast of Sicily. If it weren't for the travel nostalgia, I'm not sure I'd have cause to reach for it. Dry down is lactonic and cosy and won invited compliments. I may keep a hold of this small bottle for a nostalgic lift on autumn days.

Metallic, aldehydes, saffron leading into a sweet balsamic woody quality with a nutty vibe with a hint of smoky/roasted facets. There is a slight aromatic feel here and there too. I also really like the dry woody papery vibe from the vetiver as well as some occasional salty vibes. After not having worn this in a while I was pleasantly surprised revisiting it and performance is extremely good.

Very sharp cheap smelling aftershave opening notes, kind similar to the strong opening of Poets of Berlin. Howeer, just like PoB it dries down to something pretty. The drydown of this smells powdery, oud-y herbal and nutty. I think it smells super unique and def has a middle eastern vibe with the oud and saffron. It has a super cozy warm vibe, I see it being a great scent for fall and winter.

not for me to wear personally (a tad masculine) but i LOVE the saffron and pistachio in this one! the spices in this one remind me oddly enough of babycat (it's definitely the saffron) but maybe like its mother; it's partially responsible for the dna in babycat, but misses those darker leather and pepper notes. this one is very beautiful though, and i will absolutely layer the two!

I mean no wonder this caught my eye (my nose?)... I'm a sucker for saffron and have recently taken a liking to airy qualities/ aldehydes. The richness of the pistachio following shortly afterwards threw me for a whirl too, in the best way. It's not nutty (I don't like nutty), more warm. I think the juniper is to credit for that. Just so so cool. I would love a full bottle one day.

BR 540 2.0? Still considerably unique. I do love the fruity/nutty pistachio note in here, and the oud, when I'm not usually a fan of either. Things are sweet, cozy, easy going, and a little smoky once the heavy saffron dies down. If it weren't for its predecessor, this would be a standout and very impressive. Most likely to shine in the winter or colder weather.

Juicy, colorful and fun scent with sweet, obscure and fresh facets (or faces?) Unusual combo, somehow reminds me of another exuberant Duchaufour creation, beloved Havana Vanille by L'Artisan, sadly discontinued. Very extravert perfume. Really like it, not sure if I love it though.

Oh my god. Spicy, gourmand, oudy, moody goodness. This is incense and dark bars and plush leather couches. It keeps changing on my skin. This is heavy and complex, like good bourbon. This is what I imagined a rich oil baron would smell like.

It’s a gourmand but not overly sweet or bubbly. It reminds me of old libraries with mahogany bookshelves, green bankers lamps and leather wing backed chairs. I like it and anticipate wearing this throughout the cooler months.

it is a very nice comforting fragrance and definitely worth a try, NOT a safe blind buy it mixes so oddly with the chemistry of your skin.

Industrial Revolution gourmand. Brass polished with brandy, rubber oiled with honey. Carved mahogany, lacquered in molasses. A clean girl Francis is not. He is dense, heady, smoky, treacly. Sweet but masculine, like a worker bee. And potent. A thimbleful could stun a hitch of Percherons. Unfortunately for me, this scent has too much of a presence and I was crestfallen not to find a compelling pistachio. The closest I can imagine is an empty tin of baklava, now repurposed as a snuffbox. It’s a scent I’d love to waft on a passing stranger, not hot on my collar. Mental Snapshot: The most prosperous merchant in all the Citadel. He smokes a fat wooden pipe of the finest tobacco, spiced with the riches of furthest yonder. The brocade waistcoat of a lord, the callused hands of a labourer. If you haven’t imagined a handlebar moustache yet, you’re imagining it now. tl;dr: savoury Willy Wonka 🍯 🎩 EDIT: it has come to my attention that worker bees are female. Let's imagine a dapper butch worker bee, then.

My review is probably not at all going to be helpful than to other maybe identify the fact that based on what I'm about to say that the aldehydes are at the forefront for me. This smells and I do mean EXACTLY smells like a laundromat I went to growing up. I wish I smelled the pistachio more, but I'm not really getting it. I feel like it's soap, oud, vetiver, and a whole bunch of sweetness. I enjoy that it smells like a childhood laundromat for me, but I don't really want to wear it.

Opens very alcohol-forward and rough around the edges, just like "To My Father" (which is absolutely not unisex). This is a sharp punch in the nose that quickly fades. Very forgettable overall. The one thing I've found that drastically improves the scent is by layering with Clive Christian's 1872 (also a mediocre fragrance on it's own). Funny how two wildly mediocre fragrances can layer to yield something so solid. Without layering: 5/10; layered with 1872: 7/10.

Bland, wood, everything about it is mid. I wanted it to commit and go somewhere, smokey, or sweet or bitter or...well anywhere. It’s incredibly safe and gift able for someone who might be sick of sandalwood and wants an alternative to Santal 33. Reasonable projection and longevity. There’s nothing ‘wrong’ but I won’t give up hope of finding something a bit different that I can access without import tax or selling a kidney.

The initial spray and wear of this smells so strongly of leather to me. The dry down is far more cozy, a soft, sweet, woodsy scent that is very lovely. Not sure I can stand that initial leather shoe smell for long enough to make me want a full size. I think this would smell amazing on a man though, really sexy and unique.

I am selling my 10ml sample, UK only. I am downsizing my huge collection, selling lots of discontinued gems, take a look at my profile!

Kind of ended up smelling very petrol-like on me after a few hours.

Mostly fruity to me, powdery drydown.

All I’m getting off my sample is the smell of burning tires, I’m so sad. There has to be something wrong with mine because there is no way this is the intended scent. I can’t even make any other note out, just chemically burnt rubber

Smells like pure smoke on me, nothing else. Gave to my mum, and although I still don’t love it, it smells very different and much nicer on her. An intense perfume, definitely not a safe blind buy

STRONG! it smells very grassy and clean but SOO not good on me. unique fragrance, something i think a science teacher would wear who likes frog dissections.

I generally like Vilhelm, but this one was not good for me. Cinnamon, leather, musky *cough*

Very strong sticky suffocating sweet vetiver... This one kind of made me nauseous...

I can't get past the suffocating opening. So Oud-heavy I can't smell anything else.

Tried this one out in the hopes that it held some sort of interesting pistachio note...I was instead met with no discernable pistachio at all and this is nothing short of robbery and synthetic snobbery. The scent opens with a vegetal note and a hint of fake leather/suede and an undercurrent of something synthetically sweet - artificial vanillin via some amber/ambergris note (and no saffron or aldehydes to be seen at all in the intro either). After a few minutes go by, some vague woody notes show up that are, again, purely synthetic and nothing impressive. Around the hour mark, a sort of "nutty" note drops in but nothing akin to a pistachio note, let a lone a grilled one...whatever that might smell like. The scent kind of hovers around the nutty, woody, and sweet notes for several hours and is altogether not totally unpleasant, but this is not what I was promised and it misses the mark massively in quality and does not meet the brief either. Honest to goodness, I smell none of the listed notes here - I have most of these ingredients in the form of natural essential oils (and several synthetic aldehydes) and I can resolutely say there is not a shred of anything natural in here. I don't even get synthetic saffron here and the 'ambergris' is definitely cetalox...not sure why vetiver and cypriol and styrax aren't here in their real form as those are all relatively affordable ingredients and would have done some good work here. For $250 for 100mL this is a pure cash grab. I have sampled a few others from this house (Mango Skin, The Oud Affair, and Poets of Berlin) and was thoroughly unimpressed and had the same impression that they were cheap and the brand used purely synthetics (read: it costs next to nothing to make) arranged in a rather amateur fashion. Hard pass on this and shame on this house and their perfumers for releasing such dull and pointless fragrances for such outrageous prices. It is also an American brand...should have known as the perfume houses there are often lacking in history, education, context, and value. If you want pure synthetics for a more reasonable price and arguably more interesting blends/stories, I would venture toward Imaginary Authors. Same sort of vibe but they at least don't blatantly rip you off for what is obviously a synthetic affair and they a have far less smarmy backstory as well.