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This has no bearing on the content of the reviews. Some reviews are based on samples provided by brands others are based on samples obtained by the author.
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The content of posts is never ‘sponsored’ by any external agencies. The site is not affiliated in any way to any brands*, wholesalers, retailers or organisations involved with the fragrance industry.Īll reviews are entirely independent. features reviews of perfumes, interviews with fragrance industry figures and general articles related to the world of scent. If you’ve enjoyed this post, please consider supporting my workīy ‘buying me a coffee’ using the button below. That said, the perfume nerd in me would have loved it if the brand had given it a slightly different name - Re-Imagination. And it is as a whole that Imagination works, presenting immaculate lines and relaxed nonchalance without ever seeming to try too hard. But overdoses are justified if they function well within the whole. Some will no doubt complain that an overdose of Ambroxan is a somewhat lazy way to grant a fragrance diffusiveness and assertiveness, and there may be some truth in that. In Imagination, Cavallier has revisited his 90s composition and has made the top more sparkling – shades of Dior’s superb and much-missed Escale A Pondicherry – while cleaning up the base. As others have done before, he shows us with this release that scent-creation is a cumulative art, with new ideas building upon earlier ones, pulling them in novel directions, giving them surprising twists, presenting them in subtly, but markedly, different ways. Thankfully, Imagination is no clone of Cavallier’s earlier work, and I mean this not to be disparaging about the Bulgari – which I always enjoyed – but to make the point that the perfumer hasn’t merely dug up a formula from his dusty notebooks. A geek-tastic moment, if ever there was one. Sure enough, a quick search revealed that the Bulgari, released in 1995, was also composed by Cavallier and that its official list of notes cites aldehydes, tea and amber. Moments later, it came to me: a vision of a sleek bottle bearing the words Bulgari Pour Homme, followed by a vague inkling that there was more to the similarity than just the smell of the two perfumes. I was convinced I’d gone through a long phase, years ago, of wearing something similar. And in the base, a massive – but not excessive – dose of ambery musks, heavy with the sea-spray tang of Ambroxan. A serene tea note, supported by cardamom and ginger. As soon as I sprayed Jacques Cavallier’s new Imagination for Louis Vuitton, some long-buried memory began to stir. Ah, the satisfaction of seeing the scented stars align.