Well guys, I’ve never seen anything like it. I just bought a 125ML bottle of Babycat Raw Bourbon for 169 bucks at The Luxury Beauty Store (run by L’Oreal as an outlet for their overstock fragrances and beauty products). They’re usually a pretty good deal for a random assortment of Armani, Valentino, Prada, Maison Margiela, Viktor & Rolf and YSL fragrances but I’ve never seen the more exclusive lines in stock there before. They had 125ml and 35ml bottles of Tuxedo Sharp Patchouli, the Babycat, Muse, and a bunch of others for 40% off retail and just today they started running a Labor Day sale of an additional 15% off. If you happen to have one of these stores near you, you should absolutely call them to see what they have in stock and get the heck over there ASAP. I found this link which has addresses for these stores in California, Texas, Washington, New Jersey, Oregon and Nevada https://www.simon.com/brand/luxury-beauty-store They had some other incredible deals like a 150ml refill bottle of Prado Luna Rosa Ocean EDT (one of my top five fragrances for life) for like 30 bucks. They even had YSL’s private line - in addition to Babycat I picked up 24 Rue de l'Université for a steal as well (sadly, they didn’t have bottles of 6 Place in, but they did have the candle versions which was pretty funny). Good hunting!

Buckle up. This is a long one! Iris Debonair is another welcome step in a new direction for Creed, which I can appreciate. I had high hopes for this scent, based on the name, as I have recently been on a bit of an iris kick thanks to DHI 2011 and DHP 2014. I wasn’t expecting it to smell like either of these fragrances, but I was expecting more, well…iris! Don’t get me wrong, the iris is there, but it might as well be the ghost of an iris flower that you’re just barely able to perceive the remnants of. Like a flower that was once there, but only the faintest imprint is left behind in its absence. I find myself really having to search for it, rather than being confronted face to face with something that says, “Yep, that’s iris, alright!” But for some people, that may be exactly what they want, or all they can tolerate of that note. It’s also a very light, airy, fresh, clean version of iris in contrast to the dense, waxy, powdery iris of the Dior Homme line. To my nose, this is not an iris fragrance. This is a fresh, clean, creamy, slightly fruity, slightly green fragrance. The most dominant notes that I detect are fig, wormwood, and citrus, with a nice creamy and juicy nature. There is sort of a gin quality to it from the absinthe, but by no means is it “boozy.” It mainly adds a fresh green character to it, alongside the violet leaf. There is a subtle lavender note that further adds to the clean, soapy nature of the fragrance. But I don’t really detect any spiciness from the pink pepper or cardamom, nor do I get any amber OR wood from the amberwood, or any musk from the ambrette. Which is sort of where this fragrance falls a bit flat for me, as I feel it would really benefit from a solid woody note to give it some backbone and perhaps some musk to add depth and more weight to such a light fragrance. As overused as sandalwood can seem at times, I feel the right type of sandalwood note could further enhance the creamy, somewhat lactonic, aspect of the fragrance, while some cedarwood might add some much needed depth.