Smoke
Akro (2018)

All the smoke. Opens with acrid hints of burned insulation but pivots immediately to the smoke from a 3 alarm fire - a tenement, a furniture manufacturing plant. It quickly softens and a sweet note reels in. A woman wearing a spicy scent and smoking a cigarette half a block away. A hint of backyard BBQ coals, lovingly tended. Finally something like a plush velvety rose topping the best pipe tobacco ever put up.

Yes, this is smoky. But this is smoky in a way I just can't handle, especially in its first twenty minutes or so. Cade oil was not meant to be overdosed so as not to evoke the aftermath of a five-alarm fire, I suppose Cresp threw caution to the wind and decided "f--- it, let's burn this motherf---er to the ground."

Ashtrays? Yes, along with the wayward cigarette that resulted in the blaze. Smoke at a point legitimately like I am inhaling charred wood. I am convinced that the vice here is not smoking cigs but rather it's arson. Like, come on...

The dry down is far more merciful, even downright lovely in its more nuanced tobacco accord with benzoin, but not worth enduring what precedes it.

This fragrance is an equal blend of tobacco and smoke, resulting in a dark and hazy tobacco scent. The amber in the drydown provides some sweetness, reminding me of Tobacco Vanille and Herod. However, I was a bit underwhelmed as I had high expectations for this fragrance. While it's a pleasant scent, it's quite linear and takes inspiration from a few other fragrances.

Why, bleeding is breathing
You're hiding underneath the smoke in the room
Try, bleeding is breathing
I saw you crawling on the floor

I do get a slight smokiness in the opening but it quickly turns into a tobacco leaf-dominant fragrance. Versace Dreamer used to be my go-to tobacco leaf scent but Smoke is now my reference.

It smells very natural and reminds me of actual tobacco leaves that have been curing. I grew up in town with a couple of tobacco processing plants and you could always smell the curing leaves in the air during certain times of the year. It always had a distinctive, sweet, and green scent. That's what you get here with Smoke along with the addition of nicotine, giving it a hint of unsmoked cigarettes.

My wife hates cigarette smoke but liked this fragrance, so don't be afraid of this being too smokey or dirty. It's not that at all and is quite pleasant.

I get very good projection during the first 3-4 hours and then it settles nicely and sticks around for 9-10 hours.

My first sampling from the house of Akro is Smoke, which frankly nails the concept better than I possible could've expected in terms of accuracy, smelling of an ensemble of different smoke smells, including cigarette, cigar, and charcoal/barbecue, coming off somehow both appetizing and evocative of an upcoming meal but also a lot of people smoking in my vicinity, which can be a bit off-putting. It's certainly smoky, but also spicy and woody. It's fairly dense and makes a very strong impression but there's enough space and air in the fragrance to appreciate some of its nuance; it's not strictly a cloud of smoke but more of very strong wafts of smoke. Other notable contributors are cade, a favorite type of juniper, the use of which in Imaginary Authors A City on Fire adds to its spicy side, and a mix of tonka and benzoin that do slightly round things out with a bit of sweetness.

As a first impression of the house, even though I'm not in love with the fragrance, Smoke hopefully provides a good idea of the audacity and artistry of its founder, Olivier Cresp, and the concepts within it, as I'm looking forward to trying other Akro entries, especially Awake.

Smoke performs very well, with very loud projection in the opening hours and strong longevity thereafter. Akro's fragrances seem to be sold exclusively in the US via Luckyscent, with each fragrance in their collection being sold for $160 for 100ml, very reasonable pricing.

7 out of 10