When I first smelled Kerosene fragrances in 2017, I was bowled over. They struck me as the dragster race of fragrance: huge engine spitting flames, vast flabby tires ready to burn rubber, long, skinny frame twisting under the strain. The time evolution of Kerosene fragrances is: Huge boom!—Wait for the rubble to settle—Enjoy. Naturally, simple things are never quite as simple as they seem (and vice versa for complicated ones). Kerosene’s secret sauce is good raw materials and a totally straightforward what-you-smell-is what-you-get attitude, plus good drydowns. This is punk fragrance, and the thought of evaluators in Louboutins grimacing over a Kerosene smelling strip fills me with joy. This said, I find the eight recent ones disappointingly cruder and less inventive than the batch of 14 early ones reviewed in the 2018 Guide. These are olfactory one-liners deserving of one-line reviews.
Summer of 84: Vast grapefruit aldehydic. Follow and Followed: a dragon’s coffee breath. Sweetly Known: cardamom in coffee. Promises, Promises: blah musk. Found in Light: sour honey.Walk the Sea: metallic floral. Winter of ‘99: smoky vanilla.
Niche perfumery curse of having a really strong original lineup and then releasing flat nothings later on. What causes this? Who knows. Few have broken this pattern.
Mm. Sounds like I’m staying with Anatole. Thanks for this, Luca 💋