WHAT I SMELL: Purple Suede opens with a dry and warm sweet and smoky leathered lavender that is soon met with a pronounced suede. It’s inviting and wonderfully soft in tone and texture. The perfume moderates the leather with the lavender as if the leather contains a powder from a lavender sachet. This powdery mixture is muted and surprisingly dreamlike like for a leather perfume. But of course as soon as I write about how soft and muted it is, Purple Suede begins to turn to the more robust with an undercurrent of peppered oud that begins to push itself in from beneath. The leather begins to sharpen, and to me, turns from the unisex to the more masculine with a deep and increasingly heavy presence with a nod to the funky with the addition of civet. Thankfully after awhile the leather comes back into play, but it never returns to the soft and muted suede that I liked at the beginning of the journey.
From the Goldfield & Banks website:
An olfactory imagination expressing the scent of aromatic fields of sunburnt lavender, where blossoms are crisped by the fierce heat of the sun. Paired with the scent of rust-coloured saddles, this sensual perfume reveals a distinctively rich and dry sillage. A contemporary and unexpected take on lavender and leather.
Botanical & Essences – Lavender Tasmania, Pink Pepper Reunion Island, Hyssop Flowers France, Woodleather, Patchouli Indonesia, Oakmoss, Civet, Amber, Oud
WHAT IT SMELLS LIKE TO ME: Little John, played by Alan Hale Sr. in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938). A nice enough fella with a good demeanor, but who might need to clean up just a bit.
THREE WORDS THAT DESCRIBE PURPLE SUEDE: potent, funkified, robust
WHAT OTHERS ARE SAYING ABOUT PURPLE SUEDE: I Fragrance
BOTTOM LINE: I loved the opening of Purple Suede and found that the soft lavender infused leather demeanor that was initially there was pretty and calming. Unfortunately, with the addition of the civet and oud, the perfume took a path that didn’t appeal to me. Not bad, but not a love either.
- Bone Rating: 3 out of possible 5 bones
- Scent: Aromatic Leather
- Classification: Unisex, but leans masculine
- Expense: $235 for 100ml parfum extrait
WHAT I SMELL: Royal Sapphire opens with an invitingly sweet combination of bergamot and mandarin that quickly begins to warm and infuse itself with the biggest, most full bodied jasmine. It’s heady, it’s intoxicating and it’s almost bubblegum sweet. I might be turned off by that, but the finish of the mandarin and orange blossom seems to hold back the surprising boldness of it all. Now all I have to do is to wait and see if it begins to retreat…and after some time it begins to. After a short while, the jasmine begins to even out and a very subtle, flattened grey amber begins to lift towards the florals from below. As such, the sweetened boldness turns more towards the cashmere. At this point the perfume begins to soften and become a bit fuzzy with just a hint of powder. And ever so quietly, the perfume begins its journey to the pretty as some patchouli brings a lightly sweetened finish to the now muted jasmine and the dried and powdery woods. Don’t get me wrong, Royal Sapphire never really quiets to a point that it becomes mild and meek, instead it remains quite bold throughout it’s life. Royal Sapphire cannot be called a shrinking violet.
WHAT IT SMELLS LIKE TO ME: Royal Sapphire is less like sapphire jewelry and more like a cozy and comfortable sapphire colored throw.
WHAT I SMELL: Santal Blond opens with a warmed cardamom infused bergamot that quickly moves to a putty like chewy jasmine with a deep undertow of sandalwood. The chewiness seems to last but for a minute as it moves more to a puffy cotton ball cloud of a dream. Mixed within the cloud is just a hint of bourbon which has a lightly caramel sugared feel to it. Overall, the perfume is full of projection but in a very soft and light manner as if it’s drifting off the air in the breeze. As the perfume continues to develop it really begins to move to the woody and become linear in the most wonderful of ways. What I mean is that it seems to lessen in it’s complexity to create this very intimate sheen of warm and soft sandalwood without any harsh edges. 
WHAT IT SMELLS LIKE TO ME: Moonlit woods.
The Scented Hound 