Launched in 2016 by French fragrance house Fragonard. I was reminded of Fragonard’s fragrance heritage when I read Luca Turin’s four-star review of Fragonard’s L'Aventurier in the ‘Perfumes, The Guide, 2018’: “Fancy that: a modern masculine without a woody-amber! What is the world coming to, we ask. Young perfumer Jordi Ferandez is clearly as fond as I am of the old (pre-reformulation) Azzaro Homme (1978), because he has managed without slavish imitation to recreate the husky-velvety timbre of that old marvel.  This perfume has a full-on guy thing, but not high-strung aspirational, or weird hope-you-don’t mind-me-smelling-of-wet-concrete hipster: just a guy hard to date in time but easy to date for dinner. Naturally, this makes it perfect on a woman.” Sounds like just the kind of fragrance I want to wear.

It opens with notes of lemon and pink peppercorn. The lemon isn’t brash or harsh, but aromatic and vibrant, while the pink pepper adds a rosy floracy to the opening. Soon a rich, resinous, sweet note of amber joins the lemon and pink pepper. It’s as if they are drawing the amber up from the heart to the top. I like what’s happening here. The amber blooms at the heart where it’s joined by patchouli. At this stage, I like to press ‘Pause’ for a moment so I can focus in on L'Aventurier, to close my eyes and inhale and release. And when I do, I smell a patchouli that is woody and earthy, deep and dark, and yet allows the lemon and the pink peppercorn to peek through. If this is the ‘full-on guy thing’ Turin mentions, it’s pretty fantastic on me! The patchouli latches on to vetiver at the base, enhancing its woodiness while a note of leather gives it a velvety sensuousness that belongs to both sexes.

L'Aventurier is the smell of confidant sensuality – never bold or brash - that I have every time I wear it.   

Notes: Lemon, pink peppercorn, patchouli, amber, vetiver, leather and musk.