La Collection Couturier Parfumeur Patchouli Imperial Dior for men

This smells so regal! I ran across this scent on a man at the mall. and when I asked him to find out what he was wearing, I immediately went to the department store's Dior section. Unfortunately, my country doesn't carry La Collection Privee. i'm madly in love with this masterpiece!

The projection I got from the man was at arm's length, which was very good! who needs a room filler like "in your face" anyway?


Offtopic: I went over some Dior stores on google and I noticed that the bottles of this collection are placed on a lit desk. why do they do such a thing? doesn't that amount of heat ruin the juice?

I just took a sample of this perfume. For me smells similar with Corandel which I love.

What I like very much about Patchouli Imperial, is that it manages to cover differents aspects of patchouli in one fragrance. I sense the powdery, the earthy, the dirty, the fresh mentholated and the gourmand aspects of the patchouli. They dont show up at the same time but in diferent moments fighting to get front stage. On topo of that you have the addition of coriander enhancing the animalic qualities (to some it might smell of arm pit) I can see some similarities with oud leather, they both have a woody animalic transperent quality in the oppening, but PI turns more mellow and gourmand in the drydown I suspect bacause of amber and cinamon.

I think its a very sophisticated patch, and belongs to my list of favorite patches together with Coromandel, Broneo, Patchouli Intrigant, Coze and Farmacia Anunziata´s Patchouli.

On the docks of Marseilles in the time of the last king Louis Philippe there was told the story of the scandalous woman known as Olympe. Her father was the proprietor of a spice shop near the center of town and as a young woman of 15 she often went to the docks with her father to meet the ships arriving from the East. Spice ships laden with every imaginable wonder from the Orient by way of Silk Road and the Red Sea routes to India. The ships were also full of sailors.

Olympe was not beautiful but she was tall and of a certain elegant carriage. She had little interest in boys let alone men at an age when her girlfriends were giddy with mere dreams of affairs of the heart. That all changed in an instant one August morning when a ship known as The Marie Thérèse docked at Marseilles. As her father was inspecting a shipment of coriander Olympe idly twirled her parasol made of Mysore sandal wood and Belgian lace and became fascinated by the play of light that threw dancing shadows across her face. Something on deck flashed silver though the tiny holes in the lace parasol and she stopped twirling it. Slowly she tilted the parasol up to peek from under its brim. The silver braid on the epaulet of the right shoulder of the most beautiful captain’s uniform she had ever seen was twinkling in the morning sun. She looked up to the face above it. He was eating a mandarin orange from Sicily and as he bit into it the gold juice exploded in to his right eye. Olympe laughed too loud and the squinting captain turned with an angry grimace to see her. She covered her mouth with a gloved hand but could not stop laughing. That was when he smiled at her as he whipped his chin and tossed the now forgotten and ravaged orange overboard. The cedar gangway swayed as his impressive form sauntered down to the dock. He bowed and took her hand to kiss it. Olympe had just caught up with her girlfriends. The Captain would teach her to surpass them on the road to scandal in ways she could never imagine. She would remember always that that the first time he kissed her he smelled of a refined masculine Indonesian patchouli.

After he deserted her, and his bastard baby died there was no reason to stay in Marseilles. Her father wouldn’t have her in the house and tore here heart when he called her a whore. In Paris her luck changed. She went to work for a dress maker Prudence Duvernoy who as it turned out was in the business of turning out courtesans. Olympe had the kind of look that was popular with the aristocratic young men who haunted the Opera and in no time at all she was in demand. She was famous for her charm and dry wit. She was always laughing, never sad and very busy. For a brief time her only rival for business was a young courtesan by the name of Marguerite Gautier.

Only late at night when her clients were gone and she was thankfully alone at last and no one could see her would she let down her guard. In the ritual of preparing for bed she would peel a mandarin orange form Sicily and eat it. Then sitting at her vanity with her hair tied up in a hundred cotton bows to tighten the curls she would dab on her wrist, behind her ears and on her décolletage the rarest Indonesian Patchouli bought at a very great and dear price. On occasion as she inhaled the alluring seductive fragrance one tear would slide though the powder on her cheek to her chin and twinkle in the candlelight for a moment before it fell.

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From La Collection Privée by Dior comes the stunningly melancholy and hauntingly beautiful Patchouli Imperial. This elegant perfume was created by François Demachy who is the nose behind so many incredible perfumes, Colonia Intensa, Dior Homme, Fan di Fendi, The lion’s share of the Privée line to just scrape the tip top of his the perfume career.

This enticing elixir is captivatingly designed to work well on men and women and envelope the wearer in a vale of oriental splendor that shimmers and vibrates with only a few well chosen notes. It opens with the majesty of the great bell at Notre Dame deep and resonating Indonesian Patchouli leaf that dominates the perfume. Smaller simultaneous notes ring in of Sicilian mandarin orange, Calabrian bergamot, Sandalwood, coriander and cedar. Blending together these wonderful notes play off of each other in the most complementary tones. It isn’t in any way symphonic and complicated like some great perfumes are but rather like chamber music for cathedral bells.

Patchouli Imperial wears so well and for a considerable time. I have had it on now for ten hours and it is yet to diminish in its blooming tendrils that like a tide move in and out and have been delighting me all day. It has a good projection too at about arms length for the first three to five hours and then moves in to be more personal at about ten inches.

Seductively inviting and not your grandparent’s patchouli of the 1960’s at all. There is so much more here in this refined and truly oriental patchouli than you would ever suspect if you only know the old hippie oils of the last century. There is a feeling I get when I wear it that it is as I mentioned, melancholy, not sad but more nostalgically romantic and filled with memories of first love before the world and fate stepped in to wake up the dreamer.

FIVE PLATINUM STARS *****

Fragrantica classifies PI as a men fragrance, but I think it is unisex, and maybe leaning one tick on the feminine scale of unisex (ladies, just wear a little less as the patchouli in PI can be overpowering)--I bought a full bottle based on a first impression I sampled at Dior's, but after wearing it a few times I am convinced it is not fully masculine at all.

This is a straight forward, high-quality, strong patchouli fragrance, from the opening all the way to the dry down. It is all about Patchouli, so do run far and very far from this one if you don't like Patchouli. I don't notice different phases or characters of patchouli as PI wears off as people have described it. To me, the scent of Patchouli is very linear in PI. Looking at Fragrantica's list of scents, the sandalwood and the cedar are not apparent to me; if these scents are in PI, then they must be very well blended and have a scent-modifying role on the patchouli rather than a role of standing out as distinct scents--yes, the Patchouli here is refined and rounded, not as dirty and hippy like as Patchouli can be. I don't get the citrus scents either; if there are any, they must be playing a role of making the patchouli wetter and crispier in the opening. However, the coriander is very pronounced and lingers for a long while. It gives a clean earthy tone to the Patchouli. I do get a very strong, thick, and unrefined honey scent in this fragrance. Honey is not listed as a scent in PI and there may as well not be any, but there is a honey-like scent that sweetens PI quite a bit.

At the very very very end of PI's dry down(10 hours +), almost when the patchouli seems it will finally disappear from your skin, you smell very close to your skin and in an almost imperceptible way, something semi-sweet, warm and delightful that, for lack of a more trained nose, I would call a very light amber-like wood note...perhaps is that touch of sandalwood finally showing up? Beautiful, and then disappears after 1 hour or so. I ask "why does something so beautiful like you shows up at the end of the party just to leave all to soon?" And it tells me, "because even though I've been there from the start helping my friend the patchouli, you are not supposed to notice me. This is all about the patchouli, not me. I'll see you in my own fragrance in Dior's Privee Collection" Then it goes away smiling.

If you like Patchouli as the central character in a fragrance, PI is for you.

An earthy woody patchouli. Slightly powdery (like amber) on the dry down. The sillage and longevity are just average after a few sprays to the arm.

In the far distance you can faintly smell a little in common with Givenchy Gentlemen but it is way too distant to be excited about it.

Overall I don't hate this scent but it doesn't hold a candle to the great patchouli fragrances like vintage GG or Giorgio Beverly Hills.

I won't be purchasing this.

Very smart, elegant high quality Pachouli fragrance (without the old skool dirty earthy Hippie stereotype).

This works well as an office/ corporate smell if you dare to show some current-uptodate sophistication and a bit more daring personality without offending too much.
(just a little pushing the envelope, lol)

Very linear indeed, well there are only 3 ingredients:
Patchouli, Coriander and Sandalwood.
I love Sandalwood but it can be sometimes too dominant and prefer it for winter scents (Egoiste, Musc Ravageur, Joop!, etc..)

However, here the use of Sandalwood is moderate, just to add depth and a warm, balmy dimension to the green chypre dominance.

A very nice modern Patchouli with linear quality projection and development into a softer, warmer, woody dry dowm.

One of the Top 5 of this exclusive range.

smells of amber more then anything else

Wore this last night and was quite impressed. Found it to be rather linear, which was nice. The coriander on top really "classes" the patch up. The sandalwood has a nice sweetness to it. The word 'elegant' kept coming to mind. The patch here is not neutered, but it is balanced by the other notes. Going to wear it again and just might try to track a flacon down...

UPDATE: flacon tracked down :-) . i'm generally partial to filthy, dirty, hippie patchoulis, and this is a really classy alternative for when i want patch, but want to be refined. if you love patch, definitely try this out.

You should find it in main Dior own boutiques - usually located in selected areas but also in heathrow or CGD airports

where to buy this perfume? can't find it anywhere even in dior website

A high-end patchouli fragrance. The scent is strong and loud, I should say. Patchouli here is very prominent and natural, it is surrounded by typical of Dior exclusive fragrances noble woody notes. If you like patchouli, try this perfume, it's a classic!