Memoir Man Amouage for men

Ciao a tutti. Desidero porre una domanda: come mai c'è una così grande differenza tra i prezzi che compaiono sul sito Amouage e quelli applicati dalle profumerie in Italia? Mi spiego: la versione Memoir Man da 50 ml sul sito costa 175 euro mentre in profumeria 184 euro. E fin qui la differenza di prezzo è comprensibile. Ma le cose cambiano drasticamente per la versione da 100 ml che sul sito è prezzata 215 mentre in profumeria ben 276??!!!
Per quanto riguarda il profumo l'ho provato recentemente ma percepisco solo l'incenso e l'assenzio senza ulteriori sviluppi di note. Ma mi sono ripromesso di provarlo nuovamente essendo una fragranza molto difficile....

Dark gourmand I can live without. I dont' get tobacco, leather or amber. I get some weird black licorice note that I really don't want to smell like. $200 licorice. Great. Not really, though.

Ok..this is a great one..can't deny.

It starts greeny..fresh in a woody/tobacco envelope!

Basil & mint start really well..and evolve to a deeper..(incense/sandalwood)and tobacco wraping!

Getting from fresh/green to woody/dark in a smooth way that won't make you reject it!

It's unique really.

BUT..but but but...
as all Amouage "inventions"..so pricey!

Ok..I'm going to check my oil well now...

I admit :the first time I smelled this perfume I was really disappointed!but then I gave it another chance>> and this is the result: this one drove me crazy ! in the daytime u smell sandalwood,leather with incense!!! if u put it in the evening!!(I tried it myself at 10 pm) you will see the magic of this fragrance : all the notes one behind the other in a frish way & a nice Harmony!!! like if u smell that from it's main source!!! something unbelievable! Great sillage & longevity
this is really really a masterpiece

My opinion about this fragrance can be only one – masterpiece of masterpieces, the king of fragrances, the queen of dark perfumes. This is truly the only scents I will use forever in my life to make myself happier. Mysterious, deep, perfect creation inspired by God or Gods taking best parts from the history of perfumery. Memoir is sweet and dry in the same time. Woody, smoky and herbaceous but so cozy and gentle that you will get feeling you are in heaven all the time wearing it. Sorry I have no idea who is Karine Vinchon but she is genius of the century. Based on the Memoir I can only suggest other “Huge Noses” to get classes in her school. In my opinion Memoir is he same for nowadays as Chanel No.5 was for over 90 years. It should be included to the pantheon of best and most memorable fragrances ever made. The price is very high but it is worth any money. Different than other expensive scents, Memoir was crated to give you happiness and peace, not to make creators or the company richer.
Memoir is Arabian perfume so it is full and strong… but it has also European perfection, South American wildness, Australian Sun in its wings, African spirit, Asian sensitivity and Native Americans pride. I love it and wish everyone to get a sniff.

I love this scent. Incense, tobacco and vanille, wow!!

This is incredible and perfect.

This is the best of my entire colection, since today (feb/2012).

Amazing!!!

Longevity 10/10
Projection 10/10
Scent 10/10

A quality scent, but not worth the price.
I get a bit of the mint, petit grain, a smoky feel, and I get the leather a little in the mid and dry-down.
On my skin, projection and longevity is only average at best.
I understand why some love this, and I quite 'like' it, but far from a buy for me, even if it was cheaper.

Memoir opens up with a combination os green notes rounded by a somehow cold note. Could it be mint? Maybe... ater about 20 minutes the incense kicks in giving the fragrance some depth and also a dark aura if I may say.

Through time the smoky vibe stays in leaving a very nice impression. A fragrance that will not shout in your face instead will blend in a very pleasant and easy to wear way. Amouage quality!

I just received this cologne today. It's the 2nd bottle in my Amouage collection (the other being Reflection Man). Memoir is FAR AND AWAY the best Amouage cologne I have ever sprayed. It's about as manly as they come. It makes me want to put on a clean white shirt with a paisley tie, a very nice suit and about 3-4 sprays of Memoir. Everyone comments on this cologne (positively of course). The house of Amouage really has hit a home run with this fragrance. The lasting power is amazing (a good 8 hours or so) so there's no need to reapply. It's versatile enough to wear at the office, in the board room, on a date, during the day, during the night, you name it. I purchased my twin brother a bottle and had it shipped to him I enjoyed the cologne so much. This one is so far the favorite fragrance I own, or have EVER owned!!!! Definitely recommend having this for any man in his collection. If you can only justify having ONE very high end fragrance, make it Memoir!!!

Wore this today and was quite torn by it.

On the one hand, it smells intriguing and deep. Clearly this isn't some cheap scent assembled by an amateur. It's obviously quality stuff in every regard. I enjoyed how the tobacco comes out very early and just sticks (it gets sweetened up in the base). Longevity is tremendous. Sillage is okay (I'm starting to think that maybe nothing has sillage on my skin!).

On the other hand, I must concur to a large extent with the closings of bronstein and NevilleM's reviews: are you sure this is what you want to wear? The scent didn't make me feel happy or pleasant or joyous or contemplative. It has a 'brooding' about it. Maybe it's the kind of scent some dark, emo-goth kid with arbitrary money would dream up? At best it didn't elicit an emotional response. At worst, it elicited something unpleasant.

My wife didn't like it very much. When it was into the mid notes, I was apparently confusing the incense for patchouli - or the combo of tobacco and incense for patchouli. I asked her "does this smell like tobacco or patchouli to you?" She sniffed and said "it kinda smells like tabouleh" (tongue in cheek). It didn't do anything for her.

I can't say I didn't like it. It was damn interesting and is well worth a few sniffs by any scent-hound, IMO. I can say I have no intention of buying anything beyond the sample I have, and I'd be surprised if I wore from the sample again.

Mirkwood Forest in a bottle.

The best perfume i've ever had smell in my entire fragrance life, are 20 years of perfumes, i think I know a little about lol. When i felt the top notes, immediately came to my mind a wonderful trip I made here in southern Brazil, where it was cold, and put together a nice friend to drink a beautiful absinthe Portuguese. This aroma mixed with mint, was outstanding combination. The warm heart for incense and velvety with a delicate rose is an amazing oriental refinement, with a lightly lavender maybe.
At the base, tobacco and sandalwood scent leaves with a dry, woody and sobriety odd, along with leather and a intense vanilla comforting. I falled in love with Memoir :)

Just sniff this & think about black swan, imagine that silver shining plumage, very nostalgic, maybe not such opulent like Jubilation but still deep & hipnotizing. Worth a try definitely.

I get nice tobacco with woods, vanilla and incense, there's somewhere that mint & absynth, all that are wery well blended.

Price is scary but worth every drop.

longevity 10/10
projection 10/10
scent 10/10

In the bottle, it smells like a barbershop scent; putting it on is like someone punching you with a fistful of black pepper. Yowza! This is back-of-the-throat-rasping stuff. Within an hour, the pepper abates and the resins come out. This is act I: a spell of mystery, depth, and what feels like ancient, primal power; it’s still a bit restrained, as though with gentlemanly reserve. It dances with the pepper and then the resins combine with woody notes (is that oud there?), for act II: a deep, rich, masculine, yet not overpowering scent. Five hours in, the sweet musk smell arises and remains on the stage for three hours, bringing this olfactory performance to a close.

Memoir Man is better than average, but for the prices that Amouage charges, I was expecting something otherworldly. Although I didn't care for the smell of Creed's Green Irish Tweed, I could see why it commands the prices it does: it lasted forever and the scent was unforgettable. Memoir Man fails to justify its price tag with the overly harsh and unblended opening and the generic drydown.

(I tested this in early fall temperatures in Florida.)

Yet another masterpiece from Amouage. After first test, I didn`t care for it much. But second time i tested it, I liked it a lot! Sexy, deep, dark, and manly. This is like a stronger cousin to Honour man, and a weaker (and much more versatile) cousin to Epic man. Mysterious, smokey and dark. Put on your black suit, black tie, white shirt, and 3 sprays of Memoir, and you are ready for nightlife!

I like the opening on this one. There is some note clarity and it smells very rich too. When the drydown comes, unfortunately, it has too much of a creamy quality. On the other end of the price spectrum, I may prefer Ikon to this one! A thought I've had lately is that I generally don't like niche fragrances because they are too rich, wheres the great vintage designer fragrances were just rich enough without "going over the top." In any case, I get plenty of the wood note here, and then the other notes seem to be a kind of sweet cream, with hardly any note distinction. This is not my kind of fragrance, but for those who want the "top of the line" in this genre, this one might be there.

UPDATE: I get the "smoky" note some have mentioned. For me it is like a cool, light musk. I don't really get the tobacco at all.

Absolutely loving this one and the earlier description of "Black Knight" or "Dark Horse" is very accurate. I would add to it "Fantomas" (French series of a silent killer, a phantom). (Interestingly, I think the newer "Honour" is just the white and more friendly cousin. As if to say, "Memoir" is the immediate aftermath of a devastating fire (with the coal still glowing) and "Honour" being the week after the firestorms, when the first glimmer of hope, a seedling or a sapling germinates to life through the ashes.)

Reminiscent of the sadly discontinued first GUCCI pour homme, just darker, moodier, and pitch black smoking charcoal with some sweet leathery licorice vanilla rubber goodness. Very well balanced between spicy, smokey and gourmand. Don't get the rose (probably covered in ash and coal) and the Absynth is only recognizable when being told.

Would go perfectly with either a Cashmere or woolen roll neck a la 60ies Mods, or with a slight S&M Leather outfit.

Almost smelling a bit "sinister".

A morbidly beautiful dark but not depressing masterpiece!!

Perfect for cold-hearted business men, entrepreneurs, A Listers of all kind, designers and magicians.

Think "power dressing" and this is "power smelling"!

Memoir ... The Dark Knight

Opens dark Incense and Leather with grassy fresh Tobacco mixed in sweet Vanille

dry down Leathery Tobacco mixed in sweet Vanille
like The Dark Night .

The original mix according to Amouage :
Top Notes: Absinth, Wormwood, Basil, Mint

Heart Notes: Rose, Frankincense, Lavender Absolute

Base Notes: Sandalwood, Vetiver, Guaiac wood, Amber, Vanilla, Musk, Oakmoss, Leather, Tobacco

I re-smelled it again and I think I was wrong, it's masterpiece.
It opens near to Comme des Garcons 2; but darker, spicier and heavier; smells like flower and woods burned. Quickly transfers to a masculine and chic pattern. Masculine but not manly and virile based on masculine sexuality, all it presents is an attractive and pleasant safe pattern of incense and mint-basil.
Spicy and aromatic with leather undertone scents whole the process. Middle is grassy and base in incense and flowers. It's fogy, deeply smoky and dark, nostalgic and romantic!
There's a tree from the cypress family (I don't know the name in English), the wood smells aromatically and lovely. The dry down is just like that wood. Smoky and woody, resinous and sweet.

longevity 10/10
projection 8/10
scent 10/10

Interesting scent but nothing special... you could get better for that sky high price

6/10

This is simply the best scent I've ever smelled.Don't care about the price-it's worth every drop.

Ther's something very special about this fragrance I can't exactly describe. Something mysterious, elusive, secret that make Mamoir very unique. Lavender (that I usually hate) is very well balanced between all other notes and never dominating, as well as Vanilla and amber. Absynth is definitely dominant in The bitter herbaceous opening but in a very special way, very original. Hints of mint and basil. In the drydown all the green notes are joined by frankincense for a great effect. The whole fragrance is stupendously austere and Absolutely distinctive. Great sillage and longevity! A sure shot!

Rating: 8.5-9/10

Aptly titled, as it reminds me of my grandaddy's attic. But really, is this the smell you want to be associated with? Better think twice before deciding on this one.

Again, i cannot feel any leather on this fragrance. Do not know why they classified this and memoir woman as leathery fragrances, because they aren`t centered or use proeminently this note.
Memoir Man is all about a green, incensy, fougere accord on me. It doesn`t feel like my favorite stile of fragrance, and considering that amouage has already created amazing fragrances like Gold, Dia, Jubilation XXV, Lyric and Epic, Memoir Man feels like a letdown for me.
The idea of creating a bitter-green accord it`s not new at all. The opening seems borrowed from the fragrance created for the First in Fragrance german store, and the base seems borrowed from l'artisan bois farine, only made stronge and more complex. There`s also something on this fragrance that reminds me of those car scent tablets that has a slightly generic green coniferous aroma.
Memoir man opens with the green, bitter accord of absynth, followed by mint and incense on the background. The lavender here seems like a subsection of a reused 80`s male scent. The incense is quite subdued, with a lemony resinous aroma that quites add complexity to the accord, but fails to make it interestingly. The base is a generic woody-tobbaco accord, without leather, vanilla or oakmoss proeminently.
If this is the phoenix, as it was firstly announced, is still on ashes.

I think Neville's description below is quite accurate. Here are some initial impressions of my own after a couple of wearings

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This scent is extremely interesting. I definitely need to give it another few wearings before I fully understand it, but I will give some initial impressions.

Memoir Man starts out with a very realistic absinthe accord. It's rounder and deeper (and has less pine/fir) than the accord in Fou d'Absinthe, and is not the brutal live wormwood plant accord in the opening of Yatagan. Here you get a hint of wormwood oil (which is aromatic, green, almost minty like spearmint but darker and smoother and more full bodied), a very round anise note that persists through most of the fragrance, and a mint note that smells more like mint leaf than mint toothpaste or mint gum. The mint is a minor player though, so do not fear. I couldn't detect the basil as a standalone note but have a feeling that it is acting in such a way to flesh out the accord which could otherwise be too aromatic and thin. Well, this is anything but thin.

The opening of this scent is dark, mysterious, and hard to pin down as the notes dance and swirl like the opalescence in a fresh absinthe louche. It is unmistakably green but is not rendered with hues of green normally seen in perfumery. We get an almost washed out green with hints of olive and black tones.


The anise element of the absinthe accord is present from early on in the fragrance well into the drydown and imparts a round darkness to the scent that hums quietly in the background - never silent but never obtrusive. Quickly the anise accord is joined by a dark woody accord.. cedar rounded out with lavender absolute. Lavender absolute smells quite a bit different than lavender oil - it is sweet and round and coumarinic and yet dark and has some fruity/berry elements. In Memoir man it never jumps to the fore but acts to deepen the absinthe accord and perhaps more importantly round off the woody notes.

The frankincense and smoky guiacwood join in the accord, and combined with the dark and smooth oakmoss and anise and other elements it creates an impression of ashes. The remnants of carbonized wood amidst the ashes left in the fire pit the morning after. In time, the impression of ash fades and the final stages of the drydown (12+ hours later) are a beautiful frankincense - a true frankincense with hints of lemon amidst the smoke.

--- after my 2nd wearing, I added the thoughts below ---

This scent is unquestionably dark and woody. Unquestionably darker and more brooding than Epic, and also more woody where Epic was more spice oriented. This is just as resolutely masculine as Epic Man, but far less oriental in nature. Memoir Man has an undeniable European feel, not so much as in the European tradition of perfumery, but instead a post-industrialized Europe that is just moving into the Romantic Era. The opening is downright melancholic. The dry down is beautiful but there is always a sense of bleakness present throughout - a black thread woven throughout the fragrance. And yet the scent is so very strong, not only in projection and sillage (both of which are as notable as in Epic Man!), but there is a sort of.. assuredness present that stands resolute against the melancholy and prevents the scent from ever becoming depressing.

The green elements of the opening last for the first hour or maybe two and this is where the scent is most enjoyable, to me. The drydown does become progressively "more similar" to Gucci PH (the original), with a fairly strong pencil shaving cedar accord tempered here by the lavender absolute, rose and vanilla (and I think I smell a bit of jasmine?) but as mentioned, this scent always retains a darkness that the Gucci never has. In Memoir, the accord is also fuller and weightier. Gucci PH is more like an idealized autumn day, while Memoir Man is that same day plunged into darkness as a storm rolls in.

Fans of Gucci PH, Fou d'Absinthe, Yatagan, Epic Man, Encre Noire, Salvadaor Dali PH and anyone who enjoys dark scents or very woody scents should definitely check out Memoir Man. In the future I will try layering them. The Memoir duo seem to have been designed, not only conceptually but olfactorily, too, to be layered, and I think the unification of these two 'disparate souls who see themselves reflected in each other' could be a very beautiful reunion, indeed.

One more interesting thing: my girlfriend loved this on me. She didn't know what it was and I had told her nothing about the ad copy but she said that it smelled dark, mysterious, and even "scandalous" on me, and said something to the effect of "It smells like.. well, if you could capture the smell of doing something you shouldn't be doing. Like the essence of one of those bad-boy men who women want despite themselves, and yet it simultaneously has this refined elegance and doesn't seem forced or contrived in any way."

An interesting take given what is mentioned in the ad-copy. That just confirmed that the scent really DID smell that way and it wasn't simply (a fear I always have) that the ad copy and expectations were altering my actual perception of the scent.

Initial impressions:
A gorgeous start very leafy green. Not sure which notes are the wormwood, but I get mint leaves under basil. [No tootpaste]
After 20 mins the leaf notes start to fade and you move into a vibrant garden - lots of growth after the spring rain, flower buds, no flowers.
Maybe too healthy, there's something not quite right in this garden.
You find yourself wandering into a wood and soon it's dead trees hanging with moss and stagnant green pools (maybe theyre filled with absynthe).
Six hours later and you're still lost in that wood and the light is failing.
Tomorrow you have to decide if you're brave enough to explore that wood again.

It's not oriental, it's not what you'd expect from Amouage - the madness of absynthe bottled as a scent.

I want to test it like ALL Amouage deserve a try.

I hope it won't be to close to the skin and better lasting power than average.
The mint, and middle notes are promising!

Base notes are really on the dark side! Epic Man is also leathery and dark.

Can't wait to smell and wear this and rate it after!