Which EDTs are known to be complex?

Hi all,

I'm a regular wearer of EDT/Cologne but I'm no expert by any means. My experience is very limited compared to some on here, however I have tried a few, both boutique and mass market.

I'm finding with a lot of scents, I just don't get much complexity!

Basically, I get the initial blast of top notes, then after a few minutes, the scent reaches a stage which sticks with me a few hours (just one accord) until it simply fades.

I get no sense of changing notes, or a progressive dry-down as the day goes by. They all seem pretty linear to me to the end.

So is it me? My nose? My body chemistry? Or am I just choosing the wrong scents?

Here's an incomplete selection of what I've tried of late:

• Samples of Penhaligons
• Samples of Trumpers
• A*Men
• B*Men
• Rive Gauche
• Guerlain Vetiver
• Givenchy Gentlemen
• Bulgari
• Acqua di Parma Colonia Assoluta
  ...

Any advice much appreciated!

John

i don't sense them either. some descriptions seem like an olympic dive. i just like what i like mostly but it helps to spray on a card and sniff it from time to time. i wouldn't have bought my gucci ph I had i not.

i used to think I had practically no sense of smell. I posted sort joking the other day about my wife's nose, but I really do wish I could pick out more of the detail notes in fragrances. I'm not familiar with all the frags on your list, but I also think Guerlain Vetiver, Givenchy Gentleman, and possibly Rive Gauche are pretty linear. If you could get a sample of Guerlain Habit Rouge, you might notice more change during the wearing. For me, during the initial 15 to 30 minutes, I notice mostly a citrus smell, like lemon. Because these are smaller, lighter molecules, they evaporate faster so that after the first half hour or so I begin to notice that I don't smell the citrus as much any longer and begin to smell more a vanilla scent, which gets "softer" over the next few hours, as the citrus begins to fade away completely leaving mostly a powdery vanilla type scent to the end. I'm sure there's much more going on that I don't pick up.

I think just spending time experimenting with fragrances, especially seeing what you notice during the first 15 to 30 minutes, and if you notice a change later on, helps develop your ability to pick out different things going on. It helps me to just spray a fragrance on my wrists and keep it far away from my face, so that I don't get "blind" to the smell after the first half hour. I just get a whiff off my wrists to see what's happening from time to time. it's pretty discreet, too.

Hopefully others, with better noses and more experience at how to "experience" fragrances will add comments, too.

I do think fragrances can be enjoyed on many different levels, and you don't have to be able to pick out every note to fully enjoy them. So, enjoy!

I'm not familiar with most of the scents on your list. Nevertheless, I'd venture it's safe to say that most of these scents are composed primarily of synthetic substances.

While they are reliable, stable building blocks, IMHO you're never going to get the same kind of depth with synthetic substances that you do with scents composed of all or primarily naturally-occurring substances: EOs, concretes and/or absolutes. EOs, for example, are incredibly complex scents on their own that change over time. Blended together in an alcohol or oil base & applied to skin, natural compositions like these will most definitely change & deepen with the passage of time. The trade-off is they (generally, but not always) have a shorter shelf life and that the scents themselves generally don't last quite as long on the skin. There are, of course, exceptions, but speaking broadly this is the case. Synthetics are, in the main, cheaper, more stable & much longer-lived than naturals.

I agree with Randy's excellent comments. On the OPs list, I would have thought that the Pen's and the Bvlgari would exhibit good evolution. Of the others on the list I know well, I just do not recall how linear they are. (On the complexity level, I would think that Bvlgari was pretty complex, even if it did not evolve that much.)

Actually I am having trouble coming up with scents that demonstrate dramatic evolution on the skin that are easily available. They must be out there, it is just hard for me to recall. I can think of three right off though that I think really evolve in the wearing: Dunhill (1934), 88, and Knize Ten.

I'm not that familier with those scents although I did think Bulgari Blu Notte was great but very linear. I agree with jakespoppi, that Guerlain's Habit Rouge gives a pretty obvious drydown...I hear that Guerlain's Jicky is a real trip...I'd love to try it...I find that Habit Rouge takes me to different places every time I let it...Meaning when I pay attention to it with an open mind...
I used to think Floris' No 89 was pretty obvious with its evolution, even while being understated...Haven't tried it in a while though...Would like to again to see if it still felt that way...Man the other day about an hour into wearing Habit Rouge, I kicked back under a ceiling fan to relax and BAM, I was remembering the first time I ever drove a mid-60's Jaguar E-type, and all I could smell was wood and leather...It made me smile...all afternoon...)

I found a few of the Czech & Speake scents to have very obvious progressions and dry downs. You may not love them but if you want to experience some changing scents order a sample pack for about $5.00 shipped if I remember correctly.

http://www.czechandspeake.com/samples.asp

The ones that stood out as far as having drastic changes on my skin in order of how drastic the changes were:

Cuba - Didn't love this one but it had very obvious and crazy changes from opening to full drydown.

Frankinscense & Myrhh - One of my favorites in theory but it wears too heavy on my skin even with a few drops from the sample vial. The difference between opening notes and drydown are amazingly different and the ride from point a to point b is quite an awesome several hour long adventure on my skin.

No. 88 - I'm still on the fence over this scent but it does evolve into a really nice drydown over the period of a few hours.

Citrus Paradisi - Another one that wears way too heavy on my skin, it had a few small changes but they are still noticeable.

Oxford & Cambridge - Love it but it doesn't seem to last too long on my skin. The small changes are barely noticeable but they are there.

All of the fragrances (except Penthalagon - although it has recently become a corporate enterprise) that you mention are mass-market fragrances, designed and produced by one of the "big 5" fragrance houses (whose "unknown" perfumers design and produce about 99% of the worlds fragrances and industrial scent components). They're sorta-kinda complex, some are better compositions than others, but they're all designed to sell, and to sell at a price point, usually in middle to high end department stores.

Go to a shop that sells just fragrances to sniff, and do some reading about fragrances; any of Luca Turin's books are a good introduction for a beginner.

There are many, many artisanal perfumers - Diptyque, Etro, MPG and Serge Lutens are four off of the top of my head. Browse http://www.aedes.com/ or better yet, go there in person and smell some of their fragrances.

The notion that synthetics are somehow inferior to and/or cheaper than natural components is simply not true. Synthetics have been an important part of the fragrance industry ever since Ernest Beaux used aldehydes in the legendary Chanel No 5 in 1921. In fact, some synthetic fragrance molecules are more expensive than any natural...

Try Andy Tauer's L'air-du-desert-marocain and experience a complex drydown.

I am no expert, but this is the most complex men's scent I have experienced.

After trying Tauer's and Lutens' fragrance lines, I also began to re-appreciate simpler, linear fragrances.

PdN New York is thought to be a scent that undergoes a pronounced series of changes in a full wearing.

Some others I think of as "complex."

L'Instant de Guerlain Pour Homme
Versace L'Homme
Creed Windsor
Amouage Dia Man
Guerlain Habit Rouge

But I think that what you seek is a bit YMMV. By complex, I generally think in terms of scents that have a lot of notes, but nothing seems to dominate in a way you might expect.

Something like A*Men I can summarize by saying chocolate/patchouli. The scents I listed above, I can't reduce to two notes as easily. As for an evolving drydown, I have many scents, and most have reached a point where they'll smell the same after a couple of hours. Not many I know of continually morph. But PdN New York may be something you want to try. Fairly pronounced changes through the day.