Green Tweed

There's little or no overt freshness here in terms of citrus or sweet florals--naturally even the sage has a herbal edge--and the arguably old-skool tree-sappy notes contribute to an opening that younger noses may find sharp and even similar to pissy old cologne (mostly the cedar, I now think), though not to citrusy pissy old cologne. (I almost wonder whether there could have been an early Denim snelling like this if the Denim house had come out with a green-tweed flanker.) I might not recommend spraying this too, too liberally on pulse points, as, although it's not all that intense or long-lasting, in the opening at least it's pretty perfumey to my nose. If you overdid it you might risk smelling a little like one of those cheap pissy-sour perfumes (chypres, I suppose) that many women used to carry little bottles of in their purses and handbags in the 1970s and 1980s. The overlap is only partial and not necessarily obvious--Green Tweed is less throat-catchingly brash and complicated, and doesn't smell cheap--but it is there. (I don't find Green Tweed super masculine like Polo Green.) Still, to my nose the mastic gives this a slightly gummy aspect or at least lightens the resinous side, though more on paper than on my skin, and both the mastic and the musk serve to round off what might otherwise be sharp edges. Performance is adequate--perhaps only adequate--and this scent would indeed be a great companion to tweed. It's probably more an autumn fragrance than a winter one to me--it's not nearly as brash or imposing as the original Polo Green, for instance--but much of that depends on local climate, and there's probably no reason many wearers couldn't pull this off in the winter. It has a kind of bleary warmth or roundedness that I think suits the autumn, but the greenness should make it very usable in the spring too. I should probably say that it does not particularly remind me of Creed Green Irish Tweed, although it does have me drawing comparisons with outdoorsy fragrances such as Devin. (Devin will make you smell like a meadow you might walk in; Green Tweed is more evocative of a sports jacket you might wear for the walk.) To me, though, this smells a little like Quorum Silver (another cedar-forward fragrance), though more openly, expansively, naturalistically conifer-sappy. QS is almost like a dry, spicy, spiky cedar resin in comparison to GT's base of mostly juicy-fresh, clean aromatic sap or something. I don't know much about Womo's aims or business model but after smelling this I'm inclined to take the house seriously. Edit: I am not a huge fan of Encre Noire à l'Extrême. I find its elemi a bit unpleasant--terpenic, borderline rubbery, and á little on the bright side, for a resin, to be highlighted in the composition. This Green Tweed layers well with the EN. It's been a little like replacing the maple neck of a shrill electric guitar (EN) with a compatible but much less strident rosewood one. Edit: in retrospect, at least now that I've had this for a few months, I think that the inoffensively, only vaguely pee-like aspect of the opening is mostly due to the cassis, except that to my nose it is as much a warm, round, fruity (blackcurrant?!) note as a blackcurrant leaf one. I suppose that there is probably a contribution from the juniper, which may or may not have a berry component. Anyway I don't find the scent anywhere near as harsh as my thought of old chypres may suggest.