Perfume Reviews by Opiate

Équipage by Hermès

Walking through the pine trees on your way to the horse stables on a cool afternoon in October. A bouquet of Carnations & Jasmine in your hand.
The stables smell of fresh hay and oiled leather saddles.
The beautiful brown Mare you’ll be riding is named Cinnamon.




One of the greatest Men’s fragrances ever made.

10/10

Paco Rabanne Pour Homme by Paco Rabanne

There’s days when I think I could wear Paco Rabanne Pour Homme every day for the rest of my life and be perfectly content. There’s only a handful of fragrances I would say that about and this is one of them.
Much of that has to do with balance. It’s perfectly balanced and manages to be everything, all at once.

It’s dark and deep, while at the same time bright & revealing.
Strong, but it doesn’t shout.
It smells clean with soapy notes, yet contrasts that with “dirtier” notes like Oakmoss, tobacco and a slightly animalic honey.
It’s polite and gentlemanly, but it’s not above a bar fight.
Simple, but also quite complex.

When you think you know it, it reveals something new that you never noticed before.
I wouldn’t bother reading note lists on this one, it won’t get you far. Maybe far off course. Spend time with it and trust your nose.

Like many of the great fragrances, it’s a bit of a shapeshifter and can smell quite different from day to day or person to person.
One day it’s clean & soapy, fresh and invigorating. On another day, it’s all about the herbs. A warm spring day, it might register as a dark, heady oakmoss fragrance, or perhaps on a day when the wind blows cold you’ll think it surely has woods and incense.
Maybe one day you’ll swear there’s rose in there.
And there probably is.

It’s quite a mature scent as well. Confident, wise, sure footed and a bit stern.
Plenty versatile. Works just as brilliantly with a white t-shirt on a Sunday as it does with a 3 piece suit on a Monday.

Cons: It’s probably not that appealing to younger demographics, a better fit for older guys I’d say. A bit too strong in the higher heat of summer. Reformulated over the years. That’s about it.

It’s truly a great fragrance. Is it a masterpiece? Who’s to say. But I’m perfectly fine with calling it that.


*My review is based on older versions of Paco Rabanne Pour Homme.