I'm that person that doesn't care what I wear clothes-wise. I don't focus on clothing brands or…read moretrends and I rarely spend a lot of money on myself. But I always have to wear two things: expensive lingerie and expensive fragrance. If you feel the same, you will want to hit the UES for your bedroom wear. And for scent, do yourself a favor and skip Creed, and come here.
What is interesting about this place at first glance, is the way they have the perfume samples displayed. They are grouped by the usual categories, on top of a low lighted wooden display, with glass covers over the top of the bottles. The little round glasses keep the scent inside, and you smell the opening of the glass. They have spray cards too, and are generous if you'd like to sample.
The unisex perfumes are a combination of perfume oil (a la Arabic style) and alcohol based (standard, French) parfum. This results in more sillage, and more tenacity. Tbh, the store can be a little overwhelming because of this, as the oud is very strong in the air of the small shop.
They are pricey, and you might wait for someone online to do decants. We are talking $300s here, and the smallest is a set of 5ml for a few hundred. I think they could sell some single 5mls because you're really going to have to love the scent to buy an entire bottle. Me, I'm too fickle, and if you are the same, spray yourself or take a card to see how you wear the scent over time before you buy it.
I want to mention some notables, for fellow perfumaholics. Rose scents are always too soapy for me. I rarely can find a rose perfume that is true to the flower. Their musk rose comes very, very close to smelling like an actual rose in bloom. I'd like if they could do a lilac, which always comes out like cleaning solution when a perfume house tries to recreate a lilac single note. If they've been successful with rose (personally, I think this is due to it being oil based vs alcohol), then I think they might have a go at lilac, or a violet. But who knows if these things are in style for the young ones. Most perfumes lately are more fruity than floral or spice. They have many fruity scents also, btw.
Now, the piece de resistance: a scent labelled with a new category: watery. And watery it is, reminiscent of lazy summer days by a pleasant garden pond. If you could put Monet's lily pads in a bottle, I'd say this is it. Lago del Desierto.
There are many sandlewood and amber perfumes in the spicy (used to be called Oriental) categories. No fougere that I saw, really unless you count the 'watery' category as under the umbrella of fougere. There are oud and cedar (woody) categories for the men, and floral and fruit for the women on the opposite side of the table, but again the new thing is unisex. Now you don't have to be defined by perfume gender, men are delicious in florals, and women are domming it up in leather scents. Go for it. One of life's pleasures is smelling nice, and smelling others who smell nice.