Bowmakers Eau de Parfum

This is the most intoxicating, elegant, refined, INCREDIBLE fragrance I have ever smelled. I am DONE looking for new scents, and sold for LIFE on D.S. and Durga's BOWMAKERS. Say a prayer to the violin gods, ask forgiveness for the pretty penny spent on this. Just do whatever you have to do to get it on you.

This has become my signature scent. It is reminiscent of that old wooden furniture smell, but with an almost spicy heat behind it—even though it does not actually containing any spice notes. This isn’t a lumberjack-inspired manly-man’s fragrance…the woods are more sophisticated and restrained in a way that makes it suit any gender.

Initially this was a quick blast of patchouli on me, closer to liquorice root on my partner. It also started slightly sweeter on me but still not a sweet fragrance by any means. The resinous tones quickly become apparent followed by some dry cedar. the odd little peekaboo whiff of leather or amber. Overall, this is dry resinous woods, and by this time it was very similar on both of us. While all of this line is really billed as unisex, I'd say you have to regularly wear unisex fragrance and be happy to wear some more masculine-leaning scents to enjoy wearing this as a woman. My partner enjoyed this, but found it less interesting than he expected - I had bought him the Bowmakers body wash previously, and he found he prefers this. This has the best longevity of any of the 5 fragrances from this brand I have tried so far, it lasted about 4 hours whereas some of the other struggled to reach 90 minutes.

I received a sample of this amongst a perfume collection and while I don't expect of course to find all scents to my taste - or smell - this wasn't a simple 'not for me' but a visceral repulsion to it, making me feel literally and genuinely nauseous for several hours with the scent memory lingering in my nostrils even after I'd scrubbed it from my wrists! Think it was the so-called varnish note which was the culprit. Definitely not a safe blind buy in my opinion and has surpassed my strong dislike for YSL Opium by a long way.