L'Artisan "Dzing!" **

I’ll let the “inspirational notes” explain the concept for Olivia Giacobetti’s “Dzing!” done for L'Artisan: it was designed to capture the experience of being at the circus. The musk and fur of the big cats. The leather of the whip. The sawdust. And a faint waft of sweetness from the concession stands. You have to at least try that, right?

Out of the bottle, it’s modestly concentrated. I smell leather, ginger, woods, grassy hay, and dust. On my skin after a few minutes, it flirts with burnt rubber, as a lot of masculines and musks do. It does manage to steer clear of car bomb territory, however, and for about 45 minutes, I can clearly smell all the conceptual elements (cat, leather, sawdust, caramel), starting from the bottom and moving on up, in four-part harmony. In drydown, it melts into a soft sandalwood, leather, vanilla bean, and caramel glow, with some trace masculine spices (cinnamon? allspice?) I did not notice before.

For all the fanfare of the concept, “Dzing!” is a tightly delimitated leather/musk, and I appreciate the fact that it doesn’t try to do anything else: it’s not “green,” not citrus, not incense, not sweet, certainly not “clean.” It never achieves transcendence on me, though, and so I can only give it a “weird but worth it” two stars. I should mention, however, that I put it on two lovely men at a dinner party. Half an hour later, it had died on one—I couldn’t smell it at all. On the other, he smelled so sexy I was ready to throw him down and do him right on the dinner table. (Not sure his husband would have appreciated that…) Hmmph. Chemistry.

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