Hammam Bouquet Penhaligon`s for men

very lavandery scent, seems to look like a fresh eau de toilette but in the very first meaning when you take a bath or after a hammam you could use this to parachieve your cleansing, for me this is not a perfume

Smells like dirty toilet seat mixed with faded flowers. Certainly not for me. I guess older women will love it.

Actually, somebody recommended it to me, I am happy I got only a sample not a bottle.

Basically a stale, somewhat powdery rose and sandalwood affair. Hammam Bouquet smells of gentle antiquity, and all in a good way, although I feel some reservations about praising it too highly. At the same time, I don't want to damn it with faint praise, either. Let me try to find some middle ground - this fragrance lives up to its reputation as an original unisex Turkish bath "bouquet" in the proper English tradition. However, time has not really been all that kind to Hammam. The current formula is a bit synthetic-smelling, with chemical overtures that threaten the otherwise lovely ambiance this type of scent creates. It's good in theory, terrific on paper, lovely in practice, but not entirely realized in reality. Try it and see if you can get past its powdery, vintage feel. There's a challenge to wearing Hammam, and I don't think I'm up for it, at least not as it stands right now.

I refuse to see the "dusty old books" description of this perfume, particularly popular outside of Fragrantica, as a bad thing. Sorry to have to resort to a story (once again!) but this one is just too appropriate.

A few years ago, I had to spend a lot of time doing research in one of the largest libraries in the world - 3 million books on 50+ miles of bookshelves. If any part of you is a bookworm, you'll know that I'm not exaggerating when I say that the feeling of hushed awe and grandeur in a place like that is greater than in Louvre and Hermitage combined. That place was/is stuffed silly with first editions and only existing copies, which anyone could read if you were only willing to trek many hundreds of feet along dark winding corridors and underground tunnels where you were lucky to find another person to ask for directions back to daylight.

And once I made the wonderful mistake of trying to walk out of that library through one of the fiction floors. I guess part of me wanted to see if _Necronomicon_ would reveal itself to me, but instead I stumbled on another book I've never read before - Bram Stoker's _Dracula_ (I wasn't surprised when it turned out to be a first edition). Naturally, after reading the first couple of pages, I didn't notice how I made myself comfortable right there on the floor until hours later a librarian came through telling me the place was now closing for the night.

Those few hours were the most bone-chilling of my life. The oppressive darkness, my lonely helplessness, the masterfully creepy book, and most noticeable: the smell of age and experience many times greater than the length of my own life... I didn't doubt for a second that I'd be overcome by a horror I couldn't fend off; it was just a matter of when. The poor librarian who startled me from my trance was probably momentarily as scared as I was when I jumped up out of the gloom with wild eyes upon hearing his voice.

From then on, I could never refuse the absolutely haunting smell of the ages that makes you feel the weight of ancient knowledge with the simultaneous sense of your own insignificance and protection from things past. Dusty old books indeed! Try reading a classic while wearing this perfume - you will never want to watch tv again.

A boquet indeed! This is defintaly a boquet of flowers but to my nose it smells like they've been dusted in baby powder.
The opening of this perfume is so soft...the musk and amber seem to be very dominant. So unusual for a perfume...the powdery amber is usually the closing notes..not with this.

A powdery, almost masculine opening then changes somwehat. The perfume still retains a softness in the drydown and throughout wearing but the other flowers are starting to come forward more..

This could be described a "Heady" but the amber and musk in this are so beautiful they are keeping the other notes in check.

It ends up being a very well blended but also very complex floral smell.
Quite stunning!

Penhaligon's Description:
Inspired by the scent of the Turkish Baths on Jermyn Street, Piccadilly, Hammam Bouquet is an daring oriental created by William Penhaligon in 1872. Animalic and golden, it is warm and mature, redolent of old books, powdered resins and ancient rooms. At its heart is dusky Turkish rose, with jasmine, woods, musk and powdery orris. Heady and glamorous, Hammam Bouquet is evocative of the Edwardian era of decadence and excess.

My Description of edt:
Mature, old books, powder, ancient rooms-YEP for sure...mix it with a deadly strong dose of Green Grass and a nursing home and there you have it! In the south we have a green grass called Johnson Grass that grows really tall if unkempt & is literally "sharp" it can cut you if you run your hand along it. It has a super strong "green" smell, not a fragrant green either. The fragrance does tame after a bit.....into a 100 year old powder that is. Not a fan of this one at all!

Matches perfectly with the oriental hammam theme. It smells like a complimentary scent to Red Flower's Hammam line of bath products. I was so happy to find this scent. I thought I would use the bath products and douse myself in a matching perfume afterwards. I did. It wore off in minutes. What a disappointment.

Orientalism captured in a bottle. This is the olfactory complement to Ingres’ Turkish Bath, which is, of course, what a Hammam is. A brilliant projection of repressed Victorian sexuality upon the foil of an imaginary Araby. Fantasies of a Sultan’s absolute power and unrestrained sexual indulgence with unlimited numbers of women, of reversing the strict codes of the British social veneer in the dreamland that Stephen Marcus, in The Other Victorians, labeled Pornotopia. What better way of scentualizing these desires but by combining the rich floral power of rose attar, naughty jasmine, and the violet-like orris, supported by a hint of cedar that adds a traces of oriental spiciness, with the smell of sex created by musk and amber. Hamman, we realize, is just a code for what a Victorian perfume could not be called, despite deliberately intending the association: Harem bouquet. This smells like a heady opulent boudoir in which people have just had sex, pure and simple. And certainly everybody in fine society knew this and yet did not – Victorian doublethink. Few scents could be richer in cultural history and this, seriously, should be smelled by students in seminars on the Victorian Era, British imperialism, Orientalism - and gender history, since quite likely many present-day individuals would experience gender confusion here, associating femininity (perhaps even of the Queen Mum sort)with the flowery aspects and then stumbling over the sexual-animalic component.

Very unisex indeed . I'd love to get my husband to wear it . I wear it alongside it's sister Malabah. A great perfume to found a perfumery on. I wish it came in pure perfume.

I LOVE U PENHALIGONS, please open a boutique in toronto at least, i can't go to Vegas anytime i want to smell classic.

I have a secret love affair going on with this scent... I don't know if I'm ready to wear this in public, but I keep applying it in the privacy of my home, solely for my very own enjoyment, as if it was my dirty little secret, some kind of guilt-inducing pleasure. It opens with an overload of exotic spices, heavy, rich, some might say even a bit masculine or suffocating, but in about 10 minutes it develops into the most wonderful, dark and deeply mysterious rose scent I have ever encountered. I generally don't even like scents that focus on rose, but this intoxicates me like no other. It stays pretty close to the skin so in the end, when it gets to that lovely, still not too sweet, powdery phase, you'll find me sniffing my arm like a mad hound to find the spot. Must be love, love, love.

Great soft opening and musky drydown, very unisex