Tyrannosaurus Rex

T. Rex opens intensely caramelized and deep brown, then smoky, then waxy-balmy with delicious ornate florals, and then smoky again, like a bonfire among flowers. Strong Indian-wedding vibes. There's a *lot* of ylang-ylang, and it's lush, tropical, and quite rubbery. Golden and breathy, backed up with resins. Then the smoke and resins strengthen, the color darkens from gold to toffee and copper, and we've got caramelized smoky flowers, or spicy floral incense. It's very strong, but I find it beautiful. It's like Gardoni's other incense scent, Lita, with a heavy dose of floral nectar mixed in. Lots of champaca and ylang, lots of humid, heavy, tropical floralcy. Basically this is the most epic nag champa incense ever. (Does it smell like barbecue? Sure, I guess, if you don't know what nag champa incense smells like. To me it's *really* photorealistic incense. The good kind -- sweet and spicy and floral. ) Over the first hour the florals recede slightly and the smokiness strengthens. The tangy, bright-brown incense also turns a bit sharper, more pine-sappy and resinous. By the 1-hour mark, T-Rex is distinctly a conifer-resin and smoke scent; still very strong and fierce, reddish-brown and the perfect balance of sweet and bracingly turpentiney. By 1.5-2 hours, T. Rex is finally starting to dry out and calm down a little; less reddish amber-resin, more crackly golden incense and woods. (Sandalwood?) It's still quite rich and warm, though, with a lovely golden radiance. And sometimes the pine-sap note comes back and makes it glow red-gold. I think T. Rex is one of Gardoni's best fragrances, and one of my all-time faves; there are simply no other floral/incense scents this bold and epic. True to Gardoni's usual style, it's an aggro tour de force, merging the complexity of classical perfume with a punchy intensity of flavor the vintage classics never had. Sure, it's too much for some people, but for me it's rollicking feel-good fun.

On my skin, this opens up somewhere between "Imaginary Authors, Bull's Blood 2.0" and "PDM, Carlisle with a slightly blood like note", and a lot more complexity behind that again. I consider myself a decently knowlable amatuer in the fragrance hobby. But i can't even begin to sum up all the facets and nuances in this fragrance. It opens (on me) carnal and spicy, moves to woody, sweet, and floral in the mid. and ends up as a sweet, spicy, and animalic leather in the dry-down. And there is another 2-3 stages between each of those stages again. The fragrance is alive and evolving at all time. It is quite simply something to experience, not to be described. On My skin, this is quite wearable as well. The first minutes i'd say are a little tougher on other people, as the bloody/carnal note can be weird/too much for the average person. But after that, i can't find any point where it's not wearable. In late fall or winter, this will be amazing. it was a bit cold today (7-8 degrees celsius), and it wasn't too much at all. When it's freezing, this will be a warm breath of air. And at some points, it could be a literal breath of air from a carnivore. Where: Casual. Nothing formal about this. It's a fun, challenging, and dearing fragrance. Don't show up at a wedding wearing this unless you've got everyone's approval first. When: Fall and winter. Potentially early spring. day or night. Who: It's very masculine. It's dominating, it demands attention, it has a clear presence. I don't see teenagers wearing this, but i would love them to do so. Personal score: 9.5/10. This is on my "Must have" list, and i'll be getting a full bottle by mid/late fall. Absolutely worth sampling. DO NOT BLIND BUY!!!

My sample of Tyrannosaurus Rex arrived today, and I have it on as we speak. When you first spray it, it feels like an icy blast from the ice age, and then you move backwards through time from there, through a volcanic eruption filled with thick smoke and ashes into a weird, primal jungle landscape filled with plants and flowers you've never seen or smelled before. There's something dry, dusty and mineral-like just beneath the surface, and a shadowy, resinous leather note with heavy animalic facets that slowly appears and lasts almost to the end. In the drydown I smell resins, soft leather and the civet - which on my skin smells like a mix between gloopy, dirty honey and incense smoke. This fragrance is a fantastic journey that hits you in the gut and leaves you gobsmacked! Tyrannosaurus Rex is a really raw and primal scent, wild, beastly, chaotic, but at the same time it has a weird appeal. It's not a pretty, easy or familiar smell - it takes you to places you've never been before, some of them are scary and ugly, and some of them are strange and weirdly wonderful. The closest thing I can associate it with is the scenes from the movie King Kong (by Peter Jackson) where the crew is exploring the island jungle, and discovers the dinosaurs and all the weird bugs. This kind of smells like the landscape and vegetation in that movie. This beast is a new masterpiece from Zoologist! On my skin the sillage seems to be a solid medium from the beginning to the end, and the longevity is great.On my skin it lasts somewhere between 8 and 10 hours.

I haven't felt strongly to write online about anything I've tried. But this definitely left such an impression. The open was a slap in the face, in a good way. Strong, woody, and spicy. I did get immediate incense personally. My family owned a new age shop and I used to burn incense all the time, so this placed me right back into being a teenager in that store. As the mids came through more I got hints of a medical like scent in the journey, close to what child me would have called "pain". But the floral did break through, even just for a while which I really enjoyed and gave the fragrance a nice bit of depth to it. My partner swung by our study and clocked the sandalwood immediately, showing they could smell it about 3 metres away. Absolutely insane projection! Only to find it is now clinging to my skin after doing 2 sprays on a card. (Bonus was them saying they liked the sandalwood on me anyway?) My skin brings more of the resin forward to me, which was fascinating as I didn't smell it properly on the card at all. For now, this fragrance is stuck up in my nose and I do feel it in the back of my throat. One spray is more than enough for sure. Be warned to use sparingly, if not for your own sake, but for others who may be sensitive. This fragrance so far has been an interesting journey, and one I'm willing to revisit and do a proper skin test for. Especially since, of all things, I was not expecting Tyrannosaurus Rex to remind me of my own childhood. Props to the perfumer of capturing my new age childhood in a bottle.

Nothing here really softens the blow. The early opening is slightly sweet and well-rounded with florals and camphor notes, but once the metallic, balsamic, and tar sides show up, you're done for. This is the part that's truly diffusive, making the first segment of the wear a total room-filler. It's not that it's loud or overdosed; I'm just firmly convinced our fight or flight response is supposed to pick up on those smells. The drydown is slightly easier to wear (and great), but it's not as if the carnal nature ever leaves. Perhaps the best use of cade oil in all of perfumery. It weaves beautifully with patchouli and the signature Gardoni resins and animalics. Never gets boring or disappointing; it is well built with an astonishing level of detail and quality. I enjoy Bogue Maai, MEM and Come better (with which T-Rex shares some DNA) since those are scents I find a lot more applicable to real-life wear. Yet it's remarkable how unrelenting the vision here is. It's meant to shock, but it's got the bones to support it. This is a perfume. Anytime I want to share my interest in fragrances with new people, this is one of the samples I feel is necessary to show. Not that anyone will like it on first sniff, but it really shows the range of where perfumery can go, and that ends up resonating with people. If you seek perfumes for the sake of awe and artistry, it is a must-sample and one to keep close.