Blake

Bee

Zoologist8/10

I’ll start this one by saying I’ll probably never wear it out of the apartment. That said I do love it, I enjoy smelling it, and encouraging other people to smell it. If you’re looking for a photo realistic honey scent this is it. It’s rich, thick and almost edible. There’s a waxy, slightly animalic hum underneath that stops it from being a simple gourmand, which is the whole point of what Zoologist does. It smells less like a honey dessert and more like the inside of a hive, comb, pollen, the faint funk of bees doing their work.

Reflection Man

Amouage9/10

One of my very first niche fragrances, and the first time I ever smelled something I'd describe as perfectly clean. It was love at first sniff. Where a lot of "clean" scents read as soapy or sterile, Reflection manages fresh and elegant without ever feeling cheap or generic. To me it reads as effortlessly put-together, the kind of scent that quietly signals competence without shouting. It became a staple from that day forward. If anything it's one of the fragrances that opened the door to the whole niche world for me, and it's still one I reach for when I want to smell unmistakably clean, professiona and put together..

Tilia

Marc-Antoine Barrois7/10

Loathed this one on paper. I found it sharp, shrill and overly cloying. Recently revisited it on skin when it popped up in a sample kit, and I’m glad I did. On skin it tempered significantly, the shrillness burning off and settling into a woody, green, Vetiver dry down. Not an overly masculine scent, but a genuinely pleasant wear and a good reminder not to judge a scent on paper alone. I’ll likely pick up a bottle.

Ganymede Extrait

Marc-Antoine Barrois6/10

While the EDP is among my favourite fragrances of all time, the Extrait lacks the bit that makes it special. It feels deeper, thicker and smokier than the EDP which personally isn’t what I was looking for in the fragrance. While not for me I wouldn’t say it’s a bad fragrance, it just lacks what drew me to the original. I’ll definitely come back to it again, with a clear head and test it minus the expectations I had for it.

Mefisto

Casamorati7/10

Nice, fresh, bright citrus that leans straight into barbershop territory; super easy to wear and really shines in warmer weather when you want to smell clean, classic and a bit polished without overthinking it.

New York For Men

DKNY7/10

I’m yet to try this again since going down the fragrance rabbit hole but it will always bring back fond memories as being one of my very first fragrances as a kid.