Launched in 2013 by international luxury fragrance house Amouage, 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 absinth that together create a succulent herbal, green start that is 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 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 gives the fragrance 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 cedarwood and sandalwood, while a leathery, ambery labdanum adds depth and marks it ‘oriental’. A note of anisic licorice echoes the absinth at the opening, while Tonka bean offsets any bitterness. Musk mellows out any harshness.

The drydown is exotic, majestic and luxuriously complex – notes echo and hide, push and support, yet it never smells cluttered or unbalanced. Does that mean that 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 wearing it from the first sniff.

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