Coastal Salty Forest

I bought this on sale together with Sacred Green Forest, thought I was going to like Sacred Green Forest more but i didn’t- well this is not for everyone - I own a couple of hundred fragrances and over the past years I started to like these salty fragrances, style TF Oud Minerale, Bvlgari Aqva Amara, Kenzo Homme intense - I especially like to wear them on a rainy day in autumn or winter - reminds me of spending time at the seaside in Autumn when I was a kid - walking on the beach with the smell of the ocean - it doesn’t exactly smell like anything I already own, has similarities with all the others I mentioned above - this is not something when you are chasing compliments or for a first date, though there might be women who really love this scent, they can be rare

I just tested this and it reminded me a bit of Tsar, that I own. If you like that and you like that kind of green, classic style you will like this. Great performance, I washed my hands 2 hours after spraying and it's still there strong, but the price is too high for a Zara, about 66 AUD. Would I buy it at half price at boxing day? Yes and I did. I have Aqua Amara and there is 0 resemblance.

This smells like Bvlgari Aqua Amara which is proven good but really hard to find nowadays. Zara is reserving you a very good alternative here. So pleasant to everyone. Seriously a must have!

Leaving the first few minutes aside, when CSF smells much greener and takes a short while to get to the main notes, it smell enormously similar to Acqua di Sale, the differences being: AdS being a bit more balsamic, the myrtle is really hyped up together with an ozonic smell which results in a very balsamic, almost minty, close-to-nose-piercing accord, while CSF smells more toned down, not necessarily more realistic but noticeably less nose-piercing still, even though it still is quite balsamic. CSF being greener, with an ever so slightly smoky thyme note accompanying the main myrtle/ozonic accord, which is itself somewhat balsamic but takes some space from what is the pretty much only accord in AdS. Performance is not even close, a single spray of AdS has noticeably more sillage than a spray and a half of CSF, and it lasts days on a tissue compared to some 12-18h. All in all AdS is a bit bluer and brighter and CSF is a bit greener and more moderate. All in all they smell very similar but there are indeed differences, there really is nothing quite like Acqua di Sale, so if you want something along the lines of AdS and don't mind something a tiny bit greener and a bit less balsamic this is the frag to get.

It could have been much better...I like to keep track (though very hard given their pace of fragrance releases) Zara perfumes as every now and then they do release notable bang for buck stuff. I have been waiting a photorealistic marine scent from them, and there it was. When I say marine, I do not mean perfumey pleasant aquatics, but more in the vein of PR Acqua di Sale, Heeley Sel Marin and my overall favorites in the category, Reminiscence Rem and CsP Aqua Motu. These are all anti-perfumes that captures all the beauty of the sea, seawater, seaweed and that iodine infused breeze. Coastal Salty Forest has the same accord, but somehow perfumers chose to combine cypress with pine, and there for me it went wrong at the top note. The pine note is all about alpha-terpineol, that smells a bit like those pine scented urinal cakes. It needs more to mask this facets and here in all its salty marine transparency that dirty terpenic pine note is sticking out loud. Once you get through the opening, the rest is indeed a good alternative to the pioneers of this genre of fragrances.