Amouage
A unique visual signature based on accords, character, and seasonality
The citron arrives bright and almost medicinal, immediately swallowed by a wave of cracked black pepper and nutmeg that prickles the nose. There's heat here, a spiced overture that promises leather but delivers something stranger—violet already creeping in at the edges, perfumed and oddly soapy against all that pepper heat.
The Turkish rose and violet bloom into full cosmetic glory, that powdery floral intensity you'd find in a Edwardian lady's dressing table, whilst the iris adds its cold, earthy rootiness beneath. The leather emerges not as rough hide but as something buffed smooth and scented, almost suede-like, the castoreum beginning its animalic whisper alongside myrrh's churchy resin.
What remains is a skin-close veil of powdered leather and patchouli, the vetiver providing a slightly bitter, grassy foundation whilst the myrrh keeps everything shrouded in incense smoke. The florals have mostly retreated, leaving only iris's mineral ghost and an ambery warmth where the rose once stood—intimate, strange, and decidedly addictive.
Imitation Man throws convention straight out the window, presenting a leather fragrance so saturated with violet and iris that it exists in a kind of perpetual purple twilight. Leslie Girard has orchestrated something genuinely peculiar here: the opening's citron and black pepper suggest a conventional masculine trajectory before the heart floods the composition with a Turkish rose-violet pairing that turns the leather accord strangely cosmetic, almost lipstick-like. It's the iris that makes this truly unsettling—its rooty, earthy character collides with the supple leather and castoreum base to create something that smells simultaneously like a vintage Guerlain compact and a biker jacket left in a spice souk.
The nutmeg weaves through the floral accords with an almost narcotic warmth, whilst the myrrh lends an ancient, resinous quality that prevents the violets from becoming too pretty. This is leather worn by someone who understands that flowers can be as confrontational as animalics. The patchouli and vetiver anchor the composition's woody spine, but they're supporting players to that dominant floral-leather duality—expect something closer to Habanita's vintage powdered darkness than any conventional oud-leather masculinity.
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3.9/5 (97)