Anarchist A by Toskovat'

An utterly absurd scent, starting with the declared notes. The Toskovat brand tends to produce fragrances so ‘complex’ that they lapse into vulgarity, hard to wear not because they are challenging, but because they end with a synthetic base of a poorly blended note mix, beyond the high price they charge for their creations. The note list is clearly a cover-up of ingredients that, instead of creating magic, generate distrust. What does it smell like? A fresh animal and sweet space, like mixing commercial sweets with commercial blue lines. Is it worth it? Not at all, leave it on the shelves.

To me it literally smells like rubber (not necessarily a bad thing)

@jeloumaifelas Every artist, by virtue of receiving the time and attention of their audience, owes them respect. Attempting to determine the audience’s sensations by declaring in a database a series of highly distorted accords is, first, inflating a bubble (because more and more fragrances will have to declare non-substances to compete in this economy of delirium). And, second, it is kitsch. It is the work of a bad artist, someone who does not trust their talent to transmit an emotion and has to point it out explicitly. In literature, they say ‘show, don’t tell’. I believe the same standard should apply here.

@lapuertaenelojo Perfumery is an art. I think you expect too much from both perfumers and Fragrantica; neither owes us anything. Furthermore, one must distinguish between the concept of ‘note’ and perfume ingredients. Notes are perceptions, and the artist has every right to believe they have found the aromatic notes they declare. Another matter is what each person perceives from the same scent.

@NaeLisa97 I would tell you that it’s because each person builds their own fantasy, and indeed, if you look at my reviews, you won’t read anything other than me building fantasies with all kinds of things. However, regarding Fragrantica as a directory, I expect it to inform me with maximum precision and not try to push pre-made fantasies on me. The fantasy belongs to whoever knows how to evoke it in the blend, not to whoever is limited to naming it in the sheet. Without mentioning that this practice of declaring notes beyond chemistry carries the danger of constituting a speculative bubble and threatens a landscape where every house, to compete, will have to enter a race to see who releases the most spectacular one. All this implies that users won’t realise what the fragrances smell like and further obscures the applied chemistry education one can acquire with this hobby.

I think it is quite disrespectful to the consumer for perfumes to declare invented notes. It is the reviewer’s job to affirm whether this perfume manages to smell of money, holy water, or a priest’s clothes. The same goes for scents like ‘lava’ (by the way, I doubt much that perfumes that list it among their notes smell of rotten eggs, which is what lava would really smell like in nature). And in fact, it pleases me more if they cite directly the chemical supposedly behind the fantasy notes. It is much clearer, instructive, and I am glad to see that new molecules continue to be discovered and implemented. We should even seriously consider whether declaring notes like ‘lotus’ or ‘poppy’ is also a form of pulling our legs. It would result in much more clarity if they told me that linalool or extract of [insert flowering plant that actually produces scent] combined with calone was used, for example.

This one definitely has to smell different, hehe