Secret Woods EDP: "I prefer to wear it in the evening, for special occasions: it has an undeniable charm that has never failed to impress me!" - Humbert The lady took this weird looking, orange colored bottle off the shelve and asked if she could spray it on my skin. In full repulsion, I, again, answered: "Yea, sure". My plans to only test some Kilian on skins just for thrown out of the window.

Costume National worked with Dominique Ropion to create this oriental scent of a strong and unique character. The richness and rare quality of raw materials – some of them coming from the prestigious LMR Laboratory in Grasse – together with the ultimate technologies create a warm, sensual, elegant and charismatic perfume, which embodies the true soul of CoSTUME NATIONAL. Soul Natural Spray is a versatile fragrance that can be used in different ways. You can spray it directly on your skin for an intense and long-lasting scent experience. You can also spray it in the air and walk through the scent cloud for a more subtle and discreet fragrance. However you choose to use it, Soul Natural Spray will leave you with a feeling of confidence and elegance. This fragrance is designed to captivate the senses with its unique and sophisticated composition. It has a fresh and light top note that opens with a blend of sparkling citrus fruits and juicy fruits. In the heart of the fragrance, you will find a blooming bouquet of sensual flowers, adding a feminine and romantic dimension. Finally, the scent is rounded off with a warm and seductive base of woody notes, soft vanilla, and musk. Soul by Costume National is a unisex perfume that opens with a distinctive spiciness. The initial smell is predominantly cardamom, with a hint of tangy bergamot and a subtle touch of pink pepper. These spicy notes are prominent at first, but soon make way for the heart of the fragrance. Cyber Garden EDP: a fresh, enveloping scent inspired by a futuristic garden where rare and unusual notes create a vibrant balance.Master perfumers, with their great skill, create authentic works of artin each of the brand's collections, using high qualityingredients. The main goal of Costume National is to give new lifeto precious ingredientsfrom the perfumery art, such as amber, sandalwood, saffron, jasmine, ylang-ylang, and patchouli, transforming them into elegantand modernfragrances that maintain a timeless style. A brand with a refined taste, which is also reflected in the iconic designof its flasks, sculpted following a plaster modelcreated by the founder himself. There’s no doubt: these flacons represent a manifesto of styleand beauty, capable of satisfying both the eyeand the noseof the most demanding enthusiasts! Regarding the smell: a complete masterpriece. I know, the word ''masterpiece'' gets thrown around like a hot potato but in the case of Soul, its indisputably fitting, in my opinion. This new addition to Costume National’s fragrances range represents the unnecessary confirmation that the only good Costume National scents ever made where the early couple of ones composed by Bruyère – 21 and Scent Intense. It almost seems the guys at Costume National share this feeling as well, since Soul smells basically like an unneeded rewriting of Scent Intense crossed with influences from some of those contemporary Middle East cheap brands which are quite invading the market lately – brands like Arabian Oud, Lattafa, Swiss Arabian and countless of similar ones, with their nuclear, and often sweetish spicy-smoky oud and/or leather blends. Soul is for me exactly halfway all of that, and I wonder why they hired some renowned nose like Ropion for such an uninspired, clerical copy-and-paste job. Soul definitely keeps Scent Intense’s peculiar bone structure of powerful, sort of dry and extremely synthetic amber-musk-fruity notes, and boringly crosses it with a smoky praline of vanilla and artificial, sort of medicinal-nutty oud with a dark shade of leathery patchouli and a greyish salty feel of ambergris. The result is basically “Scent Intense Oud & Patchouli” with a whiff of M7’s trademark ambery-medicinal oud.

Soul by CoSTOME NATIONAL was (and still is) so rich, dense and sweet that my repulsion converted into shame: how could I be so condescending towards the suggestion of the assisting lady? I learned my lesson: we live to explore and can only explore when our mind and attitude are open. Its a sexually seductive perfume, where ambergris combines with woody and ambery notes, to sweet, lustful and spicy effect. The vanilla creates a soft aromatic accord that soothes the fragrance but does not change its slightly oudy and ambergris nature. EDP: "This fragrance is so pure and candid! It smells like milk, but also has spicy notes that create a wonderful contrast…wow!” - GraceA dirty caramellous spicy mélange whose diabolisms is really hard to cope with. This Dominique Ropion's woody-oriental (appointed in a sort of Serge Lutens' style) is rich of precious woods, tobacco-vanille, old-leather aroma and oriental spices overall kind of "arabesque" and seasoned, a juice teleporting the wearer in the coziest/classiest of aristocratic "cultured" heavily woody/leathery ambiences. Costume National Soul is an almost visceral take on resinous amber, an hellish "taste" capturing helplessly your senses and their all at once submissive self-control. This main synthetic note appears in here sugary-resinous (caramellous spices, woodsy resins, honey), more than barely smokey (actually more properly oriented towards tobacco, a smoky-sugary take on amber/tobacco), vaguely boozy (kind of exotic rum-infused), minimally leathery (velvet vanillic leather), notable in smooth sandalwood presence and rooty bold. The main accord of dark amber, patchouli and fur-like leather is close to the Costume National Scent Intense's dominant chord (in its deep dry down), both the juices are indeed definitely darkly glamour and velvet-chic but, while the latter is misty, dandy and enigmatic, Soul smells more rounded, rural, "cozy atmosphere eliciting" and kind of seasoned, actually like something such of more intellectual and "cozy-ambience unfolding". Scent Intense is more earthy, mastered by dark patchouli, more floral-suede "infused", a less sweet noir-urban aroma basically more balanced by a mitigating crisp tea-note, on the contrary Soul is more burnt sugary-spicy and fruity (kind of peachy/plummy honeyed-resinous). Soul Parfum EXT: a pure and elegant unisex oriental fragrance! The Amber heart creates a unique, noble and romantic olfactory symphony.