Monsieur.
Editions de Parfums Frederic Malle (2016)

I'm not old enough to know this for a fact, but if this indeed smells like a Monsieur, then it's a middle aged man in the 1970s going through a mid-life crisis, a forestation of chest hair hanging out of a half-unbuttoned shirt, getting close to him you smell his newly-pursued brick-weed consumption hobby being covered up by the spiciest and pepperiest patchouli aerosol available at the local head-shop, and he's just spilled bargain-shelf rum all over himself. In other words, he's a mostly off-putting character that needs a shower and a change of clothes asap. Now, I'm a little late to this 70s head party so perhaps the pre-Estee Lauder formulation was much better. I'll let someone who has lived with this perfume since its release to tell us how much, if at all, it's changed. In addition to the opening that makes you want to recoil and yell "whoa, dude!" it is very short-lived. It went to a very wan skin scent on me in less than 3-4 hours. With that factor as well, I'm definitely leaning in the direction that EL has tampered with this, but how much so I cannot say.

To proceed further, I must assume this is still (mostly) faithful to the original release, and ask myself what happened. Jovanovic and Malle were an odd pairing, but they gave us Dries Van Noten, which is not on my list of favorite Malle's but was certainly good enough that at that time I had to admit that the odd couple had an interesting dynamic. Monsieur seems to confirm my original suspicion that the pairing might have been a bit too odd to work. The opening is certainly attention grabbing; the rum and patchouli command your focus and won't let go, unpleasant though it is, but there's not much between that and the final skin scent, which is an extremely mild, pleasant, yet derivative masculine patchouli base. Maybe that was the point. The real title of the is perfume is "Monsieur." The period at the end perhaps meant to make a point of something. I imagine some man acting out in public and an officer of some sort walks over to him and says "SIR." - as in, "really, mister? Cut it out. Now. You're really going to be acting like this public?" Monsieur, period, is quite the miscreant.

Starts off as vaguely fougere-inspired, but dries down to a leathery scent with strong contributions from patchouli. Later on, musk and wood come to the fore. Very good development, lasts the course, but doesn't really excite me. Existing reviews have done a good job in speculating as to who might buy this and why; this is not something I wanted to spend time figuring out myself.

Thumbs up, but grudgingly so. Marks for the excellent patchouli. This is possibly the reference wearable masculine patchouli, but expensive and won't make it to my wardrobe.

From the very beginning, Monsieur has been one of my favorites from the house. At first, I was afraid of him because he is grumpy and dark by nature, but we easily became best friends.

In my opinion, Monsieur is one of the best "representatives" of the house. It introduces you to the world of Frederic Malle and shows you what FM can and will do in order to steal your attention.

The best patchouli you can have. Accompanied by tangerine, rum and incense.

His name fits him perfectly, he is a real gentleman!

A pungent mix of leather, metallic patchouli and boozy-grimy amber.

Compared to your average masculine, Monsieur [dot] is – in the immortal words of John Peel 'a welcome blast of foul air', as he hailed the advent of Punk Rock after a decade of three track albums and twelve minute drum solo's.

Not for old farts, or the faint hearted.

This is "old school-mature" right from the start with a blast of green and camphoric patchouli.

The wife's first reaction was “eww”. She enjoys modern, sweet and freshie scents for reference.

Not a huge projection bomb but can get over-powering if over-sprayed. Lasts most of the workday.

I really enjoy this one. It feels like a modern patchouli and I wear it to the office, whereas other patches have to wait until the weekend. I like Bruno Jovanovic's sensibility on this one and also Almost Transparent Blue.