Sharp Andrea Maack for women and men

For me this is the best one among all the others from Andrea Maack.

I expected this EdP to be … well … sharp, full of aldehydes and galbanum, or something of the sort, but it’s not. In fact, it’s the exact opposite. It’s soft and matte, more a light woody vanilla gourmand than anything else. It’s like white almond nougat, mostly just sugary sweet with traces of egg white, toasted almond and vanilla. What makes it different is the woody aspect, as if it had been made in an oak barrel.

The whole thing is underscored by white musks, not obtrusive, but filling out the composition. After my initial encounter I read the list of notes, which are pretty much in line with what I smelled, except for the orange blossom, which is minimal at best. In the end, it just ends up as a standard-issue vanilla musk with moderate sillage and longevity.

I was liking this gourmand musk scent a fair amount until I read the manufacturer’s list of notes and found out that it's a sort of celebrity perfume made for an Icelandic artist I had never heard of by an unnamed perfumer working for an anonymous commercial French manufacturer, and lists silly notes like “angel skin” and “soothing softness”. Am I missing some intended absurdist artistic irony in calling a perfume full of “soothing softness” “Sharp”? In any case, when I first tried it, the concept evoked a complete blog post on silly perfume notes. It did not make me want a bottle of Sharp.

Whilst I prefer this to Craft, it's a little too sweet for me. I just get a strong waft of chocolate.