Well, the Hermes' perfume is a bit of a bust. I wore it Saturday and Sunday. On the first day, it never really developed into anything but the smell of cedar -- most particularly, cedar chests/closets. Not an objectively unpleasant smell by any means, but not my favorite, and without much sign of any other notes to relieve the monotony.
The second day I wore it I liked it better. It was very hot and I think the heat and salt air brought out other notes -- cypress, citrus, and florals, that made the perfume pretty pleasant, and very beachy. It's billed as a unisex fragrance, and I had the impression that it would work better on a man -- that much more heat/salt/sweat would let the perfume open up.
Yesterday was an off day for me, perfume-wise, but in order to test my theory, I convinced Jeff to let me dab a little of the perfume on him. No dice! Cedar, all the way, once again. And this time, not so much the cedar of chests or trunks, but the particular scent of the cedar shavings they sell as bedding for classroom hamsters. Blech!
The scent is definitely longer lasting than the Stecca, and doesn't stay as close to the skin -- a casual passer-by might catch a whiff. Still, it's fairly understated, which is a good thing in my book. Smelling like the lair of a rodent, not so much.
Anyway, it's back to tomato scents for today and tomorrow, and the Scent Du Jour is CB I Hate Perfume's Memory of Kindness. Like the Stecca, it's really not supposed to smell like much of anything but tomatoes/dirt. So here goes.
First impressions: a cooler, greener scent than the Stecca. It smells like tomatoes right out of the bottle, but on my skin, it's not tomatoes themselves so much as greenery -- and maybe not even tomato greens, at that. More like celery. We'll see how long it lasts, and how it changes . . .