Created in 2013, this masculine fragrance was created by a woman, Karine Vinchon Spehner for international luxury fragrance house Amouage. She’s known for favouring woody, ambery notes and her talent for them is on display here.

Fate Man, along with Fate Woman, completes the first cycle of the Amouage narrative, with Fate Man parodying the force and power of the inevitable.

Fate Man opens with sweet, luscious mandarin and green, anisic absinthe that combine to create a succulent, herbal, green start, warmed by a note of spicy, succulent ginger. It’s bracing and bright before notes of earthy, leathery saffron and pungent, bitter cumin add a hum of animalic sweat in the background. And while the spices stay in the background, they do add a potency and a rich complexity to Fate Man. As it blooms, gorgeous, rich, curry-laced immortelle, or everlasting flower, comes forward, paired with a lush note of rose that softens the opening and adds a lovely floral dimension. Sweet, woody frankincense surrounds the flowers, its balsamic aspect amplified by woodsy, balsamic copahu and camphourous lavandin. The woodiness is extended to the base with warm cedarwood and creamy sandalwood, while leathery, ambery labdanum adds depth and marks it ‘oriental’. A note of anisic licorice echoes the absinthe at the opening, while Tonka bean offsets any bitterness. Musk, warm and sensuous, mellows out any harshness and finishes the fragrance.  

Fate Man dries down to an exotic, majestic and luxuriously complex masculine scent where notes echo and hide, push and support, yet it never smells cluttered or unbalanced. Does that mean it succeeds in parodying the force and power of the inevitable? I don’t know about that, but looking back on it now, I see that it was inevitable that I would love the smell of it.

Notes: Mandarin, absinth, saffron, ginger, cumin, immortelle, rose, frankincense, lavandin, cistus, copahu, labdanum, cedarwood, licorice, Tonka bean, sandalwood and musk.