Y Le Parfum
Yves Saint Laurent (2021)

A little too strong and sweet for me. Not masculine or deep enough to be a signature scent IMO. Mall vibes.

Bought this for the hubs - he smelled it on a stranger and asked what he was wearing. It's not something I would buy, but I don't mind it. It's not exactly "department store" but it's not strange or specific enough for me. The top is a BLAST of citrus, almost headache inducing, but the woody base is quite nice. If nothing else, I like it on him. Just not for me.

Very similar opening to the EdP version. The drydown has a more powdery, dryer sheet sweetness. I find this to be an improvement over the original EdT and like it slightly better than the EdP. That said, if you have and enjoy the EdP, then there's no reason to get the Parfum. Too similar in my opinion.

I get excellent performance, especially during the first few hours. Like the EdT and EdP, the projection and scent are piercing. After it calms down, the Parfum is very pleasant and wearable, similar to the EdP.

The topnotes here are fun. It's green and herbal (rbaker says minty geranium and I believe him), but also candy-sweet, and the rose facets of the geranium add a clever floral twist.

Within a few minutes, it dries down to a Cool Water-esque marine fougere, but with the salty/sour herbal geranium from the topnotes providing a counterpoint to the artificial beach smell. I've always found that Cool Water-inspired scents feel "green" to me, so the way Y Le Parfum plays around with added green is more clever than the genre usually is.

As far as mass-market masculines go, I like that Y Le Parfum doesn't fall into stereotypical bleachy nonsense, the topnotes are nice, and the interplay of the geranium with the ambrox in the Cool Water base is enough to lift this to a "thumbs up" even though I usually don't like marine fougeres. Surprisingly nice.

The opening is gasping my attention with a floral not - geranium absolute mainly, with whiffs of hyacinth transiently present too. a bit later a fruity medley is developing, a fresh grapefruit - not sour - with a touch of fresh apples - Pink Ladies or similar; an slightly aldehydic background adds a bit of additional brightness. Then a spattering of ginger adds a bit of zest.

The drydown adds a dark-green lavender note, which is accompanied by a bit of a herbal sage element in the background.

The base note is heralded by a surprisingly bright and soft patchouli, which has a slight element of a sweetish spiciness attached to it. Some vanilla develops nearer to the end in the backdrop of a cedar wood impression, although the latter is soon changed into a nonspecific woodsiness that liners on until the end. the vanilla, patchouli, and the wood merge into a sweet-aromatic blend that is never too intrusive or too cloying.

I get moderate sillage, very good projection, and ten hours of longevity on my skin.

A florall-dominated scent for spring days or evenings that As a few convincing core notes, but otherwise veers into the generic side a bit too much, especially in the second half. It has a rich set of top notes, which are combining to some moments of olfactory originality at times. The performance is very good, which tilts it into the realm of a positive score - just. 3/5

When I smelled Y Le Parfum by Yves Saint Laurent (2021), I fully got what I expected. Everyone in the upper-mid designer space dances to the beat of Chanel's drum, but can't quite master the moves in much the same way because unlike Chanel, they're beholden to corporate overlords that maximize explosive short-term profit growth over long-term sustainability, meaning they can't afford to take the risks or set the trends like Chanel does, but rather will follow marketing data and demographic research to a fault, pumping this data into AI machines that then spit out fragrances (or adjustments to fragrances that then become flankers) in order to achieve what the math says will be the widest potential market adoption. We've seen LVMH go down this path with sweeter and smoother flankers of Dior Sauvage (2015) dressed as higher concentrations, and now L'Oréal does it too with the Y by Yves Saint Laurent (2017) line. The monkey-see monkey-do behavior of these houses really just further alienate them from their once-great reputations, but alas.

Y Le Parfum immediately reads like Dior Sauvage Parfum (2019), with a massive slug of sugared tonka bean underpinning everything in the accord. Much of the "blue" accord in the opening, the "showergel" vibe created by the mixture of orange, lemon, juniper, ginger, and some galaxolide that depending on flanker, will then factor in apple, orange blossom, pink pepper, and additional ethyl maltol for sweetness, is collectively subdued in this version as expected. Y le Parfum instead just touches on the signature Paco Rabanne Invictus (2013) by-proxy opening then plunges right into the tonka, which is dressed up in a stew of patchouli, woody ambers posing as olibanum, musks, and a bit more lavender than the standard varieties of Y. Sillage is close as I'd gather from a parfum concentration, with projection dying off after an hour, but wearing steadfastly until you scrub from skin. Best use here will be winter time in romantic or casual night out scenarios, but this one has no formal or night club potential and wears too sweet for the office. On the bright side, Y Le Parfum is darker and denser so it feels a tad more mature than the rest of the range.

At very least, YSL waited until they had a bit more under the collective "Y belt" before dropping Y Le Parfum, with the clubber variant Y Live (2019) followed by the summer day-runner Y Eau Fraîche (2020), but they were both sort of superfluous themselves unless you're a hardcore Y addict. If you are, then you now have a Y for work, play, cold, warm, day, or night, meaning you can gas out the rest of us with your aromachemical wake 365 days a year. Oh what joy! In all seriousness, I don't hate Y Le Parfum, but the sweet spot for me is and will remain Y Eau de Parfum (2018), in which Dominique Ropion redressed his own work in the nightmarish original eau de toilette into something fuller, rounder, and more complete. Really, the line could have stopped there outside maybe the more aquatic flanker, as Y EdP can cover the clubbing and winter requirements on it's own. Still, if you're a huge fan, I won't begrudge you picking this up, but I'm rather indifferent about Y Le Parfum because I don't see the value in a darker, duller, heavier Y experience that does nothing to add or improve the DNA. Neutral