Deep Forest
Mancera (2019)

Deep Forest by Mancera (2019) is a highly unusual fragrance for the house, and I've really smelled nothing like it outside of some tiny indie makers. Here is a big, bold, in-your-face animalic leather with green notes and a slap-your-face civet note that you'd likely expect to find only in artisanal brands these days; you know the type of brands I'm talking about, and they make maybe 500 bottles of something they gab about endlessly on Instagram only to sell out in minutes and watch the scalpers return on their investment threefold by the end of the week. The fragrances in question often reek over unbalanced musk choices and wasted tinctures of expensive materials, but there is a certain unbridled virility in them that not even I can deny. Mancera seeks to capture some of that rawness here, but not in a totally unfettered I-blended-this-in-my-backwoods-shack kind of way. I actually like this, whereas most things which gut-punch you this hard I tend not to enjoy, as they feel made more to impress than be enjoyed. I think the goal here is to do both, or prove these sorts of things can be done with industry-grade materials and blended as such.

You still get a huge urine patchouli opening, that barrels into vetiver, leather, and sandalwood; only now there is some olibanum and rose playing push-pull up top along with a sweet-ish orange, while a neroli and violet tug-of-war stretch the rest of this fragrance into opposite extremes of cleanliness, just not enough to negate the funk. The oud note here is medicinal, and also has a drying effect on the civet pole cat and castoreum-pyralone leather tandem, perhaps the only time oud is actually the most civil of base notes in a fragrance, yet there again is this vanilla adding a sweet undertone to the musk that also keeps the fragrance in challenging territory. The saving grace for most of it is when the incense, oud, and vetiver melt together with the surviving patchouli and leather accord in the base, mulled with some amber to create a smooth, wearable and slightly more-tame take on what your usual House of Matriarch, Areej le Dore or Slumberhouse, tries to do with similar materials. That said, all the confusion and shock leading to negative impressions is understandable considering nobody expected Mancera to go this way, at all. Performance with Mancera is insane as always, so do I even need to say it?

The tricks used to get this kind of fragrance concept to "play nice" in Mancera's Deep Forest resulted in a wildly green and animalic leather scent true to what is the likely source inspiration of said low-volume high-hype artisanal perfumers, somehow domesticated enough to be mass produced for the usual Mancera customer. Problem is, that customer doesn't really exist for Mancera. The power of hype is such that a vocal minority makes themselves seem more prolific than they really are, and the kind of people that enjoy these civet-soaked patchouli bombs really do just number in the quantities these kinds of perfumes are made; everyone else online overpays for a decant so they can say they smelled it, and moves on. Mancera found out the hard way by releasing Deep Forest in 2019 to a market that was shocked and appalled, with the stuff quickly discontinued and still on clearance at discounters. I enjoy this because there is just enough smoothness and blending on tap to imagine this kind of wild ride making it out of an 80's designer house, in an alternate reality where aquatics never happened and the animalic powerhouse volume wars continued, which is a fun idea. Thumbs up

This is an odd one for me. The overall impression is that it smells dark and woody in the air. Up close, it's sweeter and plasticky, far less refined. The opening is candy-sweet, reminds me of a cola gummy. Then the white florals kick in, making it feel very mature and slightly fem-leaning.

Projection is good, if not a little loud. Longevity is also very good, lasts all day with only a few sprays.