My latest acquisiton is the Lalique Encre Noire. Because I actually had to buy it unsniffed, I went out and sampled a few other vetiver scents, like the Chanel Sycamore... the window shopping made me realize I like my colognes, so I'm now giving up several gadget purchases, so I can acquire a few bottles of scent.
I like vetiver, it calms me down like it's nobody's business (irony much?), and In theory I can just buy vetiver essential oil and be done with it, and this is the question I carried on my day out. But first, vetiver essential oil is very heavy and often refuses to mix with other oils in a homemade concoction. And second, it's usually just one of many notes in a scent, even when it's the main character, so there can be room for different kinds of vetiver. So I decided to pay over 3x the price and look for a vetiver scent.
Encre Noire is very nice for its stark, unbridled vetiver with no pompous "bouquet" to speak of, and so it does satisfy my hunger for something unusual, off-kilter and "sober." Since my reference is the essential oil, to me it also feels rather refined and not depressingly stark (as someone would coming from a sea of regular classics). It'll probably become my signature scent for a while, until I find something new to obsess over.
I'm a bit embarassed to say that, for some reason, this is also the first scent where my nose can properly detect a sense of the scent developing/unfurling over time. With a lot of other scents my nose seem to get overwhelmed at first sniff, and I often can't smell anything but the overbearing note until very late... ugh!
I've got budget for another couple bottles, one of them will probably be Eau Sauvage or a Hermes concoction. Just two weeks ago I was going to spring for an iPhone, and use Jovan Musk+Axe for the next five years... funny how "the heart wants what it wants" plays out.
(edited to add to the content)
