Criminal of Love
Kilian (2014)

stardate 20170623:

I do not get anything other than White Phenyl smell (a common hospital disinfectant made with pine oil and emulsifier).
Perhaps I am overly sensitive to this smell.
White Phenyl to me is what Pinesol is to most of you - not a good scent association.

There is some rose but is drowned in Phenyl.
I can't recommend it.

When I was young and a smoker, I used to roll my own and keep the Canadian Tobacco moist with an Apple slice. That scent memory flashed through the brain cells as I sniffed the spritzer.
On application Whoa!!
Another memory. Scent of the Premium Booze drinking, Salty Tobacco chewing, Slick dressing, Gangster leader in our area. His car smelled as if it had been scrubbed with Chlorinated something. My thoughts were then that he had performed some of his Lethal work in that Maserati.
That memory leads me to believe that the scent was created for a character not unlike Ian McShane played (Teddy Bass) in Sexy Beast. Reptilian and Deadly.
It's real charm is in the wafts of strange moldiness that adds that strange sense of bygone danger.
In reality this plays the same game as Tom Ford's Oud Wood, with a much more pleasant all be it short life.
Sample first. Strange enough that a Blind buy is hazard.
Pass me the Balenciaga Pour Homme please.

I have had an interesting time getting to know this juice. My first impressions were not the best, I'll admit. It comes out very powerful and overwhelming - that would be the "criminal" part, I suppose - I nearly felt as though I had been robbed of all my sensibilities as well as senses!

I placed it carefully in my decant container, and waited...

It has been about three months since I tried this the first time. I am not sure if its the change in the weather, or my opinion, but I'm truly enjoying this. Yes, it still comes out very powerfully - and this is not a short-lived sort of power...but it does eventually mellow out. Thank GOD!

As it lingers, I feel wrapped in a delicious blend of various warm scents, but none stands out more than the very jammy rose. "I need some toast, with this", methinks.

Heading into the drydown, it evokes the impressions of being in a tobacco barn, with the curing and smoke. It's a lot like driving in downtown Durham, NC back in the 80's, which is my hometown, incidentally. Definitely a positive scent!

I'm not sure if I'm up to taking the chance with a purchase overseas (Russia, to be exact), however I am grateful for this decant, and I'll enjoy it while I can.

A mildly jammy rose set against a warm toasty backdrop of what smells a lot like cured tobacco leaves. I'm not so certain if there is any tobacco leaf in use or if it's more of an olfactive illusion created from a clever combination of patchouli, cedar, incense and immortelle. The narcotic vibe is clearly missing. Still it's a thoughtful if not entirely original deviation from the Rose-Patchouli, Rose-Oud or Rose-Incense sub genres. Average projection but impressive longevity, lasting over 10 hours on my skin. No worries over the use of immortelle either.

Ignore the cringe-making name - this is by far the best thing to come out of the By Kilian house. And of course, it's only available in Russia.....just my luck. Thanks to a wonderful friend on Facebook who pressures her husband into muling bottles of Russia exclusives back into Europe, I was able to buy a decant of this. It is amazing.

Right at the opening, there is a slightly fruity rose spiked with cardamom and saffron. The more I wear this, though, I am unsure whether the fruitiness at the top is coming from the Turkish rose used or if it's one aspect of the tobacco leaves I am picking up. It is spicy and warm, but a little bit austere. It's definitely a masculine-leaning rose. Then comes a warm, slightly rubbery incense and tons of damp, moldy patchouli. It kind of smells like the inside of an old church – gloomy, moldy, dusty, slightly smoky from burned incense, and yet at the same time, uplifting.

The real wonder of the scent, though, is the tobacco. There is tons of it in this perfume – dry, fruity, papery, toasty, like sheaves of tobacco leaves laid out to dry in the sun, their enticing aroma filling the air for miles around. I live in the Balkans, where tobacco is grown, and I often smell it drying out in the fields, each long, leathery brown leaf hanging over a pole, almost like grapes from a vine. In Criminal of Love, I am astonished and touched to find one of the truest portraits of real tobacco I have smelled outside of Tabac Aurea. It is genius the way the dry, woody aspects of tobacco leaf are accentuated by the papery smell of the papyrus note.

I love almost everything about Criminal of Love. The way the rose, incense, tobacco, and spices play peekaboo with each other, so that you catch different notes at different times. The way Kilian named this and the other perfumes in the Russian exclusives series after popular R n' B songs. The way the perfume achieves dryness and woodiness without losing a certain balmy, creamy feel at the base. I even love the thoughtful way Kilian made the bottle look like a sex egg, because if there's one thing in the world I enjoy more than perfume, it's embarrassing the hell out of my mother and I think seeing this on my shelf would do the job. I believe there are satin handcuffs included with the purchase, which is a nice touch.

But I can't buy Criminal of Love. Not legally, anyway, and not without the bothersome step of using perfume mules. And you know, with the bottle looking like a sex egg, there's no knowing how the perfume mules actually choose to smuggle it.