O/E
Bogue Profumo (2015)

As is typical for this house, closer to a blend of essential oils (i.e. citruses/herbs) than an actual perfume. Camphor adds a musty smell reminiscent of basements or wood cabins. Not horrible, the opening is even strangely interesting but ultimately unwearable and lacking in refinement and elegance.

the wall of scent
a Phil Spector-esque kind of scent
citrus and green
perfectly balanced
screaming..
quality

Limber and brash citrus bustling with herbal and wood sap accents – bracing stuff executed in a lumberjack style, deliberately rough around the edges and unashamedly upfront about it. There's good use of a wet earth accord in the mix, which seems to move in an out of peatiness, grounding the entire composition, as do the array of woody and resinous tones in the background. There are some sweet rosy florals too, cleverly folded in, so they're there in the middle of the thing but adding a supporting voice rather than detracting from the outdoorsy citrus theme.
O/E registers as heavy on the naturals, thus can come across as being of the ‘stir the essential oils' school of indie perfumery. But overall it's far more skillful than that, with all the materials on song and never slumping into the brown shade that can creep over ‘natural' perfumes. Despite the complex orchestration of its various elements, the abiding impression is one of directness – in that it is full of life. A treasure.

O/E is an interesting offering from Bogue, and as with other offerings, it has a staggeringly long note list, almost to the point that it's unclear what it should smell like.

I'd similarly categorize it as a bit of a resinous floral mix, except not nearly as sharp as 07738 during the opening, far more a balance of citruses, other fruits, florals, woods, and resins, medium in sharpness and body, and, as implied, a little easier on the nose than 07738.

I had to take a stab at the most prominent notes on me, I'd suggest a citrus blend with juniper, cypress, rose, jasmine, mixed resins, and sandalwood. It's really quite a nice creation, unisex and versatile with respect to season and occasion, in my estimation.

I quite like it, but as it's priced higher than most of the others in the, at $280 for 50ml, it's tough to defend at that pricing unless you really love it, but having now sampled a few items from the line (including Noun, the Luckyscent anniversary exclusive, previously), I can reflect that there is clearly a lot of care put into the brand's perfumes, which are generally quite dense and robust, as well I'd certainly recommend the line as an interesting pursuit.

7 out of 10

Genre: Citrus/Fougère

O/E does not seem to have been received quite so rapturously as Cologne Reloaded and MAAI were before it, and I must admit there's something challenging going on here - a kind of deliberate dissonance that's not going to suit every taste.

Antonio Gardoni seems quite fond of a very distinctive and peculiar accord that paradoxically weds a medicinal, antique apothecary element to a furry animalic note. The idea may have first emerged with Cologne Reloaded, and was expanded upon in MAAI, Gardelia, and MEM. In O/E, Gardoni accompanies the animal/apothecary accord with a bright citrus and a weird, bitter, metallic note that I can't begin to identify. The effect is decidedly raspy – to some perhaps even nails-on-a-blackboard disturbing – especially for the first ten minutes or so on the skin.

However, I find that with patience, O/E seems to find its footing, and what started out as grating discord settles into an intriguing olfactory chiaroscuro effect, the likes of which I've experienced in certain more traditionally composed fougères and citrus chypres. Certainly not for every taste, but interesting enough to hold my attention.

I'm very puzzled by the distance between the hype which has graced this brand from the very beginning of its journey into niche, and the actual quality of their fragrances I've tried so far. Both MAAI and Cologne Reloaded seemed to me some very dull and pedantic exercises around very classic structures, something I guess pretty much any nose working for any company anywhere between the 1950's and the 1990's would have been able to compose blindfolded; and now this, “O/E”. If on one hand it's at least a bit more modern and more creative than the other two, on the other hand it kind of reinforces my conclusion that toying around classic structures seems really the main and only skill of Gardoni, or whoever is the nose behind Bogue fragrances. Because O/E smells horrid. A trainwreck. Pardon my French but it really is. Theoretically it would be a “citrus-green leather chypre”, so to speak, so imagine – on paper – a very bold citrus-green top accord built on a dark, herbal, even skanky and slightly powdery-vanillic foundation of woods, oakmoss, and some rusty tan leather.

The problem is that it seems the brief was then handed to a clueless janitor with the specific request of cutting costs and sourcing materials in his storage closet. The citrus-green top accord smells astonishingly cheap, acrid, artificial, flat and harsh, something way more suitable for cleaning tiles than scenting skin. And it's just clumsily sticked as-is on a more than mediocre leathery chypre foundation, which smells no better than any robust pre-world war II drugstore aftershave did. Mennen quality, to get you an idea. The notes smell from bad to dull per se, and they're significantly poorly blended, thrown one against the other like a toddler would do with his toy cars. All topped with spices, with the same grace (and purpose, ultimately) of someone rapidly throwing a handful of sand in your face to rob you and run away. I've nothing against modernity and “clashy” compositions, as long as there's some talent behind them. Here I don't really see any. It's just noise, cheapness, itch. A decent idea completely gone wrong. Persistence is remarkable though, which is good if you're into scrubbers; evolution is close to zero, just some lemon and herbs fading away and (surprise, surprise) synthetic cloves growing in presence together with some vanillin and cheap leather aromachemicals. Probably the nicest part, if compared the early abysmal stages. Nothing different from the drydown of any 1 dollar aftershave, but at least it's wearable (at 180 times more the price). I wish the best to Bogue but seriously... not with this, really.

3/10