New York Intense

New York Intense is the final sample from my Nicolaï discovery set. I saved it for last on purpose, as it is the most celebrated (and likely the most acclaimed) Nicolaï perfume, as far as I'm aware. I smelled it once in a shop a long time ago, and remember liking it, but on revisiting it now and smelling it properly, I am very impressed, and would consider this a masterpiece. NYI is an aromatic, herbal-woody scent with chypre and fougère facets. It is a classic masculine scent, and is an exceptional example of the genre, beautifully-balanced and made with high-quality materials. I have never smelled the original New York so cannot compare the two, but this Intense version is perfection. NYI feels very Guerlain in style, reminiscent in parts of several of their classics. This is particularly interesting, considering that Patricia de Nicolaï is a member of the Guerlain family, and was bizarrely passed over in favour of Thierry Wasser at the time of succession. There are facets of Mitsouko, Jicky and Habit Rouge here, but most notably vintage Derby, of which I have a tiny vial, but NYI is its own, distinctive scent.

Incredible Fragrance. I am 22 and absolutely love and wear this fragrance all the time. This fragrance is extremely natural and smells like you are in a green forest. The opening is very complex and on different days I get two main different scent profiles. Some days it opens very green, with a "stemlike" bitterness, and other days I pick up on the citruses and lavender much more. Both smell great and blend together as it dries down. The dry down is my favorite part of this fragrance, it is a beautiful creamy oak moss, musky, animalic and pepper combination. This dry down lasts forever especially on clothes. The scent changes a lot from initial spray to dry down but does so very smoothly. You find yourself sniffing every 30 minutes or so to try to identify the new notes appearing; it keeps you interested all day. I think the opening is fairly unisex but the dry down is definitely masculine. I find this fragrance very clean even with some more challenging notes it never comes across as funky or dirty. Incredible quality

As the name suggests, it's a rougher and more intense version of the 1989 original. This is not due to a creative vision change for the original, rather an effort to get the original in compliance with new IFRA regulations. The base notes of the current EdT lack the muscle and stateliness of the original EdT release. To that end, Patricia de Nicolai deserves commendations because 1) recreating the original to new requirements was going to be an extremely difficult task (maybe even impossible) and 2) Nicolai realized that she was not going to be able to get the reformulation so close that discerning noses couldn't tell the original and the Intense versions apart, and she didn't try to hide this from us. Instead, she renamed the perfume with the "Intense" modifier, acknowledging it is, indeed, different. The EdT available to us today is not the same as it was in 1989, so for those of us missing that "heft" of the original, the Intense is here to help satisfy that craving.

With respect all the main accords and note breakdowns here are in my view radically incorrect. This is an extremely Oriental balsamic Chypre. Yes there is an initial blast of some semblance of citrus. There is a general herbaceous sense. There are some background spices. But this is almost entirely an amber oriental Chypre. The dry down is pure inky mossiness and the perfumer herself (you can see the interview on this site ) described how she achieved this in terms of a combination of an accord comprising seaweed, patchouly, and Evernyl (sp?), which is I believe Firmenich’s synthetic Oakmoss, along with the maximum available amount of actual Oakmoss. This fragrance is the quintessential opposite of a citric or fresh scent except for the first few seconds. Everything thereafter is balsamic oriental spicy, and Chypre. The perfect hybrid!

I have gotten my nose on most of the fragrances in this genre : Bois du Portugal, Heritage, Pour Monsieur, Lalique PH, Habit Rouge, Eau Sauvage and indeed New York Intense seems to have a little from all of them but it's not identical to any of them. Closest so far is Bois du Portugal. It seems like a Frankenstein , with bits and pieces from a lot of other fragrances but so so so beautifully blended and so complex that it tops all of them. It can be a fougere, it can be a chypre, it can be an amber citrus , it does not really matter. It has so much character and beauty that I chose this as the representative of this kind of fragrance. I also think it's one of those fragrances that can be worn year round. It has enough oomph for winter but it's not heavy that you cannot wear in the dead of summer. I would buy boat loads of this stuff.