LA COLLECTION PRIVÉE: FÈVE DELICIEUSE BY CHRISTIAN DIOR (2015)

Nose: François Demachy

I wouldn’t say that Fève Delicieuse (“delicious bean”, or in North-Center Italian slang, “delicious d*ck”) smells completely horrid, but it’s really almost there. It doesn’t really “smell Dior”, and surely not “Collection Privée”. Not that the rest of the line was breath-taking, but Fève is basically nothing different quality-wise and overall concept-wise from the cheapest Oriental-gourmand ranges of fragrances and grooming products sold in drugstores or supermarkets. Stuff like Italian brands I coloniali, or Tesori d’Oriente - but way below Les Nereides or L’Erbolario, to give you a rough idea of how cheap this is. Imagine that kind of stuff blended with some sort of clumsy imitative Mugler-esque kind of “allure”, sort of echoing some A*Men flankers but without that consistency and playfulness (and they cost half of this anyway).

Basically Fève Delicieuse is a thick, annoyingly flat and cloyingly artificial Oriental-gourmand candy of vanilla, amber, tonka, cedar, powdery-caramel and spicy notes tinged with a tame hint of smoke and some pleasant sort of earthy-vegetable suble nuances, which are quite nondescript but help in lowering the diabete-inducing ratio of sweetness and represent the only sparkle of interest in this disgraceful bucket of dullness. There is basically no evolution and no particular “twists”, just a sticky slap of melted toffee candies laying on your skin, decreasing in power as hours pass – thus becoming more pleasant. Sweetness is the main and most feature of Fève Delicieuse: mediocre, cheap, unrealistic, alienating sweetness, truly comparable with any low-brow drugstore gourmand scent for teenagers. I was not the most enthusiastic fan of the rest of the “Collection Privée” collection apart from Leather Oud, but still I clearly got a sense of decent quality, complexity and craft among the others – or at least, some efforts for that. To this extent Fève Delicieuse is an astonishing ugly duckling among them (minus the happy ending), since it smells not only cheap, but also completely uninspired, simplistic, tired, a more than generic “déja-vu” with a crazy price tag and no reasons to exist. If you’re a fan of The Office US, then I’m Michael and this is my Toby.

4,5/10