Perfumer Sarah McCartney says:
Ok, I admit. I made it, so I'm biased, but I know what I intended with this fragrance. It was a personal project - a very personal one - for Max Heusler. He wanted a fragrance that encapsulated his former wild life - a night out in New York with "freshly rolled marijuana cigars, buckets or rum cocktails, high class escorts, blackout and regret". It was never designed to smell like a warm, comforting, smooth ride of a fragrance. This was always going to be a bit scary. A kind of push it too far and you won't wake up next time fragrance.
Quite a challenge. Max was ecstatic about it; he hadn't really imagined I'd do it, but he wrote straight back to me astonished; he said that it smelled exactly like his leather jacket in 2003 that he'd given away, and had then been stolen.
The freshly rolled blunts seem to have caused the most controversy. Cannabis essential oil is not the "romantic marijuana note" beloved of the niche houses. This one is more like the smell a habitual dope smoker wafts by when he (usually a he) can't actually smell it on himself any more. It's a bit stinky. It sticks to the clothes. Or the sillage from a roll-up with a bit of grass in it. It's sharp and pungent; it also blends with the cumin to give the "dawn comes up and it's time to go home" smell.
I expected this one to divide opinion. I wasn't disappointed.
The other Crimes of Passion - Midnight in the Palace Garden, Be Careful What You Wish For, Goddess of Love & Perfume and Inevitable Crimes of Passion - are the extraits in the series and they are totally different from this. If you want gorgeous (in my view) get your hands on samples of those. Maxed Out is... something else.
Crimes of Passion: Maxed Out fragrance notes
- rum, coconut, lime, tobacco, coffee, cannabis essential oil, musks, vanilla, cumin, atlas cedarwood
Latest Reviews of Crimes of Passion: Maxed Out
Mad for it Max
Smells like hasish for a while. Cumin comes to play and soon this enters the Songe d'un Bois d'Été phase.
Leathery, cuminy - animalic.
Not my favourite type of animalic but very well done.
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At the opening, I'm greeted by a harmonious tropical trio of coconut, lime, and rum, followed by a dry down into more winter and stereotypically masculine elements of tobacco, coffee, and vanilla.
The wildcard here is the cumin which adds its characteristic spicy, animalic vibe without interfering too much with the overall rather sweet concoction that is the rest of the fragrance. Some other supporting characters balance the fragrance out with some smoothness and softness---specifically, cedar and musk.
On my skin, it dries down slightly less sweet than it opens, with the cumin in particular outlasting some of the sweeter notes, so while I enjoy the balance of the fragrance more during the first few hours, it remains quite interesting beyond that.
Overall, it's sweet, boozy, slightly woody, with hints of citrus and spicy bits throughout.
Performance seems pretty strong overall. It's not a huge projector but seems very resolute, not losing much steam after some hours.
Pricing is higher than most of the house as this is an extrait, not an EDP, so it's $150 for 30ml, in realm of being only purchasable if you really love it, which I believe I do.
Certainly one you should try if the great note list is appealing, as it does work out quite well.
8 out of 10
The name holds a clue: Maxed Out. This one is edgy, arguably pushing the limit of what perfume should smell like, but I think it's done well, much better for me than Cadavre Exquis, as an example of something else I think smells intentionally edgy.
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