Atelier d’Artiste Nez a Nez for women and men

"Atelier d'Artiste" really was a weird trip for me.
You see, with most fragrances containing boozy notes, I get the feeling of either them being overly sweet or simply being way too cloying. Plus, this is from a brand NEZ A NEZ which in all honesty I'm not very excited about...so far.

"Atelier d'Artiste" is a chameleon, it opens with sour and bitter notes of whiskey and patchouli, followed by an even more bitter coffee note, very natural, weird and a slightly bit unwearable. The heart part is what I love the most here, rum note is simply exquisite and very well done. I could swear I feel cherries, it has the best qualities that a good high end rum has, I can feel not only the simple boozyness of it, but the very details that make black rum a good drink. At this point I actually started searching where I could buy this only to discover that it's almost nowhere to be found in Europe :(

The dry down can be divided in two parts, first being the super bitter coffee on top of the rum, again a bit too much for me and the end part of sweet, boozy vanilla, just slightly clinging to the skin. Delicious.

Staying power was very good - 8 hours. Silage is moderate. Definetely worth a try.

Very interesting fragance. Very boozy with a prominent note of cognac. Then comes the tobacco and spices but with a touch of sweet fruits.
Smells good.
Longevity is about 4-6 hours and sillage is moderate-low (later than the firs minutes, where is strong).

Scent: 7/10
Longevity: 7/10
Sillage: 6/10

Definitely a church basement, I enjoy the musty fustiness. I don't understand the review below that says a longevity to outlive cockroaches and the sillage of a weapon of mass destruction; although that is hilarious, that person should try White Diamonds and then discuss sillage and longevity. I applied very heavily and then reapplied like an hour later and I enjoyed it while it lasted but it was too fleeting on me. Just a ghost after two hours.

first spray, I was enjoying a raspberry, grape, coffee combo. Then I started smelling something like burnt plastic and a mustiness that stayed the whole time..this may be from the tobacco note. I've realized recently that I'm not a fan of tobacco in perfumes. The whole thing quickly becomes very muddled. The notes aren't very distinguishable, nothing pops. As with every perfume, you don't know how it'll be on you until you sample it.

I have yet to discover a perfume from Nez à Nez which really speaks to me. ATELIER D'ARTISTE is another in a series of creations which seem like they're made with a lot of interesting ingredients, and in which I sense a lot of effort from the perfumer, but somehow the final product does not cohere with my olfactory sensibilities.

This is a thick, somewhat sweet, and heavy oriental with a strong wood presence but also a strong vanilla presence and also a strong spirits presence along with a bunch of other stuff thrown in as well. My problem is that I cannot really parse ATELIER D'ARTISTE. There are so many different notes stirred together, but they do not come together in the end to produce a harmonic or synthetic whole before my nose. Instead, they smell like a bunch of different individually interesting notes stirred together.

I have encountered this sort of creation many times, and it seems to be especially common in the haute niche houses. So maybe I should be glad that I certainly don't "get" it, but I also don't really like it. The perfumes of this type which I've smelled often cost much more than some of the oriental perfumes which I find easier to wrap my nose around and much more appealing aesthetically. Just lucky, I guess.

March update: I decided to revisit this after finding it in a drawer, hoping that cold weather would be kinder to the previously missing alcohol, coffee and grape notes. No such luck. It's still pipe tobacco contaminated with patchouli. Nez a Nez would do themselves a great favor by stopping the overheated nonsense descriptions of the product and investing their imagination in making better juice. They're counting on their customers having more money than taste.

Sillage: weapon of mass destruction
Durability: outlives cockroaches
Fabulosity: Joe Camel
Price to value ratio: Zero since it can't be lower
-5/10 (yes, NEGATIVE FIVE)

You enter a building somewhere in the 5th arrondissement of Paris. You climb on the last floor. The wooden stairs squeak under your feet as you march upstairs. You open the door to your apartment, there is some cold coffee on the table that you had no chance to drink up before you left in the morning. It's late in the evening now, but it's still quite hot and in the room that absorbed a lot of heat through the roof. Even despite the window open, the room is still quite stuffy. Is there anything better than a little glass of rum on ice?

Well, Id personally have a glass oh white wine, but I suppose in this Atelier rum seems more suitable somehow.

Atelier d'Artiste is a very warm fragrance, very cozy, and very complex. It has so many sides to it. There is the woody represented by vetyver, there is the gourmand represented by sweet sweet vanilla and ripe, juicy grapes and raspberries, there is the aromatic juniper, there is the boozy side to it as well thanks to cognac and dark rum.

It is an olfactory experience that brings the past and present together, joins the art of fragrance, literature and painting together. For me, close to perfection.

A disappointment to me. The description sounded rich beyond belief. On me the patchouli and tobacco were the only notes that really came forward. I smelled like a hippie who chain smokes.

I had the chance to try this and it's high on my shopping list - warm happy drunken scent. I imagined the slightly decadent atelier in which I may share the armchair with the atelier cat. The liquor notes are overwhelming in the best sense, the fragrance is overall sweet but not sticky. Also, the coffee note is weak but discernible; the quest for coffee-but-not-sticky-sweet fragrance for me is not at the end but this is a good progress.