Straight to Heaven, white cristal
Kilian (2007)

What an amazing fragrance! Just received my bottle and I am stunned at how fascinating this fragrance is. I am also surprised by how this fragrance resembles one from the Frapin line that instead of Hennessy, there is Cognac.

Some time ago I use to own a Frapin fragrances, this reminds me of Speakeasy's style. Now, I am not saying this smells like Speakeasy, however I will say this has the style or similar genre as Speakeasy. Straight to Heaven is very smooth, yet boozy with a bit of sweetness, along with tobacco. There is vanilla and patchouli that gives a get deal of balance. Looking forward to rockin' this one!

~Performance is AMAZING - 9
~Longevity is outstanding - 8
~Sillage - 7
~Compliment - 7
~Quality - 8
~$'s Worth/Value- 10

Overall, a great fragrance!

Everyone will complain about the price, especially when Lalique L'Insoumis is oh so close and so much less expensive.
A patchouli with a white musk and cedar combo that doesn't seem to work but it does.
There is a dankness to this, wet-ish but the ambergris takes care of it all, softening the edges that appear jagged upon first sniff. Could easily pass for an Amouage.

I agree with Varanis Ridari's comments on the pricing and use of cheap white rum in this fragrance.

Initially, this fragrance caught my attention as one of the few from By Kilian (now Kilian) that interested me. The wood and rum blend, along with a hint of musk and sweetness from fruits and vanilla, captivated me. However, a year later, the scent lost its charm and became uninteresting. Recently, after two years, I returned to my sample, and the scent appealed to me once again, mainly due to the slight fresh spiciness in the background. If it were solely an overpowering rum scent, I would not have appreciated it, but the woodiness gives it depth. However, once my sample is finished, I won't be purchasing a full bottle as the projection and sillage are average, and the retail price does not justify it.

If you have the chance, it's worth trying this fragrance at a high-end department store, but I would not recommend spending the money on it.

Unfortunately, I'm going to lose cool points with the snobby hob-knobs and their "get what you pay for" mentality with fragrances priced to vet the hoi polloi from the beautiful people, because for the money wanted to attain a bottle of Straight to Heaven, White Cristal By Kilian (2007), this sure sucks. Also, I'm not going to type out the full title of this perfume comma and all, so consider this the last time I'm writing "Straight to Heaven, White Cristal" in my review. Going forward, I'm just going to use shorthand like "StH" because it makes my life easier, unlike having to smell this stuff. So the point of this stuff is to smell like booze, because Kilian makes booze; no surprise for me given the history of Kilian Hennessy, and sometimes this theme works for them just as it does for Frapin, but also like Frapin, sometimes it really just doesn't. The latter is the case with StH, although it has produced a litany of flanking special editions, so something tells me I am in the minority with this one. Again, too bad. If rich people care enough that I'm bashing their favorite overpriced perfumes that smell like rubbing alcohol, spoiled jam, and hamster cages, they can send me a cease and desist if they can find grounds.

I've pretty much summed up what to expect before even getting to the breakdown of StH, but for sake of being thorough, here goes my experience in excruciating detail: This opens like someone spilled cheap white rum into a bottle of Terre d'Hermès (2006), then let the alcohol dry up some so the patchouli sticks out more. I get some fruity ionone configurations and lots of blooming hedione with some vanilla for sweetness, but it doesn't hide the hamster cage cedar that eventually powers through the patchouli and dried plastic-bottle rum. Some ambroxan then emerges with a peppery sort of woodiness, until another familiar ingredient from Terre d'Hermès shows up to boost the woodiness and revive some of the medicinal nature of the dried spirits, rounded by the rum and made marine sort of with the ambroxan, which feels roughed up in the way it is in Paco Rabanne Invictus (2013) to feel a tad animalic. I'm not sure who likes this, but it just smells like an alcoholic trust fund kid who dropped out of dad's Ivy league college and douses himself in the aforementioned Hermès to hide the stench when he shows up for required family high-society functions. Unbelievable that anyone pays for this stuff at all. Just wear Terre d'Hermès and preserve some dignity. Performance is okay and projection is also just okay, although the smell is definitely not okay.

The bottom line here is an heir to a house that makes um... let me check my notes... cognac, has no real business trying to make a rum-based fragrrance unless he knows something about that, and he clearly doesn't. Sidonie Lancesseur has done a few By Kilian fragrances, along with some cheapies for Cofinluxe, some Amouage stuff, and even went on to do the well-thought L'Humaniste by Frapin (2009), a brand I mentioned earlier on in this review. Now I'm not saying there aren't some ridiculously-priced fragrances I'd love to own, as a few Roja Doves, Royal Crowns, and Parfums Dusita scents all sit on my "maybe if I win the lottery if I ever played it" bucket list I never intend to actually be able to scratch off, but something like this just makes me shake my head like who smells something so awful and thinks "yep, that's haute parfum right there, worth every penny"? Clearly, coming "from good stock" and having lots of wealth either earned or handed down via birth raffle doesn't guarantee good taste in perfume, just having enough funny fiat paper to toss at literally anything that tickles your fancy, no matter how banal it really is to everyone else not fooled by the tugs at the old ego-strings that most marketing and presentations for these types of perfumes have. Still, if you want to smell like an alcoholic frat boy with GQ tastes, and are willing to cough up $300+ for 50ml of it, I won't stop you. Thumbs down

Another intoxicating gourmand fragrance by Kilian. This is a rum cocktail you wish you could drink without the alcohol and sawdust being inedible. You can't resist Straight to Heaven, but I also do not love Straight to Heaven,it's just not my style of fragrance. Straight to Heaven is an evening fragrance because I can't imagine having the smell of spiced rum lingering around while I work.

Two thumbs way up!

What a gorgeous fragrance! The opening is the perfect blast of quality dark rum that warms the nose followed by a bit of dried fruit and an almost sour earthy patchouli, then the fun really begins....
From the base the most beautiful photorealistic dry cedar comes out followed by a quality musk ambergris accord that holds the fragrance together.

Superb ingredients, great projection (for a couple of hours) and good longevity (6 hours for me) what more could you want?

The only downside is the cost.... but for me it's well worth it

One last note.... I'm pretty shocked that no one has mentioned the striking resemblence between STH and Jubilation XXV ( I own both). By comparison... Jubilation has more of a sour berry vibe in the opening and heart and an additional beautiful note of Omani incense in the base but these 2 are quite similar in to me and STH is way more versatile than XXV so you can wear it much more casually!