Crème Brûlée
Ava Luxe

Many find this scent to be one of the most accurate caramel fragrances ever made, but to my nose, it overdoses on an aromachemical that mimics the more unpleasant aspects of burned sugar. It smells a little like when you are cooking caramel on the stove and some of it hits the hot stove, flooding the house with the searing stench of scorched sugar. This facet of caramel approaches the burnt woodiness of other intense aromas such as coffee, licorice, lavender, and ebony woods.

In fact, Crème Brulée seems like an abridged version of a minor chord in Un Bois Vanille and Aomassaï. Later on, the perfume grows milkier and less acrid in flavor, but also sadly a lot flatter and simpler. This scent will likely be heaven to people who love the very strong and almost objectionably caramelized notes in the Serge Lutens and the Parfumerie Generale I mentioned, and hell to those who cannot abide them.

I've been wearing this in the evening and to bed for a week now, and have enjoyed it very much. It is sweet, as in the namesake, but not overtly so. The smooth and milky notes blend to a comforting scent rather than a sweet sugar tooth mess. The oil version, which is what I have, offers soft sillage and projection. The caramel is present, and like the candy, is sticky at times, but smoothed out into a comforting smell. Gourmand lovers will find what they are looking for without an overdose of sweet. Lovely for what it is, rather than trying to be a perfume it is not.