L'Eau Pour Homme Intense Vetiver
When a fragrance puts a material in its name it has to deliver on it, and Armand Basi L'Eau Pour Homme Intense Vetiver Eau de Toilette does: vetiver is the base and the point. It opens cleanly. Cardamom brings a cool aromatic spice and blood mandarin gives it a deeper, slightly jammy citrus sweetness than ordinary mandarin would, which keeps the first few minutes from being merely sharp. The pair of them are gone quickly enough, and then the scent gets on with the business it was actually built for.
The middle is an unusually crowded herb garden. Rosemary is camphorous and piney, mint is sharp and cooling, lavender adds a clean herbal calm, cypress leaf brings a dry resinous green that smells like a cut branch, and geranium cuts across the lot with crisp, slightly metallic rosiness. Five materials, every one of them green or aromatic, and together they make a middle that is bracing rather than comfortable to sit in. Then the vetiver arrives and the fragrance settles. It is the dry, rooty, faintly smoky kind rather than the grassy kind, and it is supported by virginia cedar for a pencil-shaving sharpness and patchouli for damp earth. The finish is dry, dark and clean at the same time, and it is the part that lasts.
Christophe Raynaud is credited with the composition. It is an eau de toilette, so it sits close and stays comfortable through long days, warm weather and the office rather than demanding an occasion. It is aimed at men. The label is Catalan. It came out of the Basi family's knitwear trade, showed its clothing in Paris, Moscow, Madrid and Barcelona, and has licensed its fragrance since 1999.
Please note: images are a guide only. Packaging and bottle design may occasionally differ from those shown due to manufacturer updates or promotions.
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