Nice Try: Odin 03 Century

As I will have to keep saying until the IFRA comes to their senses, a chypre is not a chypre without oakmoss, and calling something a chypre doesn't make it one. Odin 03 Century is supposedly either a chypre or "a modern interpretation of the chypre family" (which usually just means it has patchouli in it, as nearly everything does these days), and the list of notes even has oakmoss in it, but I doubt that very much, and even if it does, there isn't much of it, and it still isn't a chypre: it's a woody oriental.

The opening has an herbal quality that is reminiscent of Old Spice, but sweetened and gentled, less obviously old-school masculine. After that, it is mostly wood and sugared myrrh. It has a vaporous warmth that is oddly but wonderfully suggestive of a dry-cleaner's, and a glowing ambery sweetness which is restrained enough to keep the scent from becoming one of those cloying keep-it-away-from-me scents. There is a bit of roughhousing patchouli in the base, but mostly it's just that sweet amber (which it has in common with Paco Rabanne Ultraviolet Man without smelling quite so robotic). Very late into the drydown, a deep spiciness mysteriously appears; perhaps it was there all along, just drowned out by the amber. And this is one of those oriental scents that lasts a wonderfully long time: eighteen hours in, no projection, but you can still smell it as a subtle glowing warmth.

Overall, it's not the most novel thing you've ever smelled, but it is very beautiful and thoroughly unisex. Of the line, it's my favourite, the one that comes closest to being worth the price.

If only it were a chypre....