Moods Uomo
Eau de Toilette, Krizia (1989)

I often find in reading other reviews that when others find the opening to certain fragrances overwhelming and too sharp, 'waiting' 30 minutes to an hour for it to settle, I am meanwhile reveling in that very same opening. I LOVE the opening to Moods by Krizia Uomo, that invigorating punch of lavender and steely aldehyde burst, with this wild unctuousness from the patchouli.

As it does dry into the heart, it doesn't at all disappoint, as there is a bouquet of white florals mingled with green herbs. The cool muguet and spicy carnation are what I detect in particular. There is an overall warm, dry sensation from Moods, but this takes a turn as it progresses into the base hours later, as the camphorousness of the patchouli gets mildly sweeter from the amber base.

This is startlingly good.

Krizia is a house that's always been a little eccentric, as it was the ready-to-wear brainchild of entrepreneur Mariuccia Mandelli, who first served samples out of the back of her car in 1954 to shops around Milan. Some decades later and Krizia started to peak in popularity, giving reason to spread into perfume starting in 1981. Krizia Moods Uomo (1989) was the second masculine fragrance for the house, made by a perfumer whose name is lost to time, and exhibiting a bit more of a dandy approach than the previous Krizia Uomo (1984), which was a rather straightforward masculine affair. Krizia Moods Uomo is very much a "cusp" fragrance, released in a style soon to be outmoded and abhorred by the mainstream right at the 11th hour of its popularity peak, and was duly discontinued and buried for all time not even a decade after launch. There are a lot of fragrances for men like this, and a lot of them command a small but worshipful following in the online community, particularly among lovers of vintages or styles from bygone eras. I think it's a good fragrance, but I'd not send myself over a barrel chasing after often overpriced surviving examples of it, because Krizia Moods Uomo is just too similar to things that survived this period for me to find it more extraordinarily worthwhile than them.

Krizia Moods Uomo is a rose and patchouli oriental, but what sets it apart from such an over-saturated field is it focuses more on the patchouli than the florals in the composition, then slides in a leather note and fougère accord, keeping things dry enough to be appealing for men's tastes at the time. If you mix Boss/Boss Number 1 by Hugo Boss (1985) with some Giorgio Beverly Hills for Men (1984), and then put a few drops of Zino Davidoff (1986) onto the dry down, you end up with Krizia Moods Uomo. The opening is full of aldehydes, spice, and lavender, but soon the rose and patchouli show their face. Don't get too used to the rose however, as it comes then goes, letting the lavender from the top mostly win that argument, before geranium, carnation, and other dandy florals smear the whole feel into a gelatinous form.. The patchouli continues being the loudest player into the base, where a leather note is smoothed by tonka, oakmoss, vanilla, and musk. There is a bit of a woody feel here from the cedar, but when Krizia Moods Uomo settles down, you're in that Zino/Giorgio vanillic patchouli/benzoin/tonka glow with hints of the lavender, carnation, and geranium up top. Moods Uomo is nice, doesn't scream on skin, and lasts about 8 hours. I'd call this formal friendly wear for cooler months.

Someone who is a huge fan of old-school patchouli will want to check this one out, especially if Givenchy Gentleman (1974) or the aforementioned Giorgio fragrance are among their favorites, but because this sits at a nexus point between so many other commonly-available masculines from the 1980's, it may feel redundant if you're not a die-hard collector. It's one of many cases with discontinued masculines where I'd say "if you see it cheap you can pick it up, but otherwise you can pass on it", because Krizia Moods Uomo not a hype monster, not an essential experience for someone looking for a functional/replenishable wardrobe, not really a collector's trophy for the self-congratulatory type who like to post their "G.O.A.T. Frags" on Instagram, and just not all that special outside the zany fonts and packaging typical of 1980's Krizia. In all honesty, the leather and fougère accord appended to the patchouli here both define what makes Moods Uomo special, but also a bit nondescript compared to its peers. If you're looking for a solid, well-built, and fairly sophisticated if somewhat soft-spoken patchouli experience that is hard to get these days outside of niche, and don't mind paying a bit more than your average modern retail price, you could do far worse than Krizia Moods Uomo. Thumbs up.

'A must have' for old school fragrances's Lovers!
Rich, well blended, strong without being "stuffy", brings a lot of elements that made 80s fragrances fame.
A don't think of it as a dry scent. The best way I can describe it: a frozen slightly spicy, formal fougere (with green aspects) tempered with rose. No sweetness at all.
Thumbs definitely up.

Great leather's scent,good spicy and woods. It's discontinued ,what a pity ! The best Krizia parfum.

Genre: Woody Oriental

Moods opens like many a number of 1980s oriental masculines, with standard issue lavender and bergamot, plus a touch of spice. The spice endures as the top notes settle, and the heart coalesces into a smooth woody rose and sweet, anise-tinted oriental accord. The touchstone fragrance of this type is the regrettably deceased Patou pour Homme, which centered on a hugely complex and brilliantly blended heart of amber, rose, carnation, and spices. Moods pales by comparison, (as almost anything else might,) but it's robust and pleasant without indulging in the bombast that makes so many of its contemporaries hard to wear in public.

Moods trails off into an amiable sweet vanillic/resinous accord that's refreshingly natural in a genre marred by aggressively synthetic woody drydowns. I appreciate the way Moods avoids the gourmand clichés that have overtaken more recent woody oriental fragrances for men, and if the likes of A*Men and Le Mâle are just too much for you, this scent ought to appeal. That said, Moods is not an exciting scent, and it certainly breaks no new ground. I'd be more tempted to mourn its demise were its place not so easily taken by scents like Armani's Code, Givenchy Pi, or the immensely superior Jaipur Homme EdP.

Moods Uomo opens with a blast of aldehydes, a realistic, dark and dense leather accord, with juniper and carnation notes and a massive, sulphur-ish medicinal dose of pungent cloves, a camphor note and lavender. Herbal-mossy notes, somehow transfigured, vibrant but dark and immersed in a metallic-concrete kind of ambiance – earthy and rooty like roots and branches growing out a sidewalk. Utterly modern and for that time even almost avant-garde. Quite 1980's in fact, but not in terms of perfumery style, rather in more broad terms of the images and the suggestions that it brings – sophisticated hedonism, post-modernism, a sort of gloomy elegance, the general deep metropolitan, urban mood of pollution, translucent surfaces, an already-new way of interpreting leather, which tends more on a dark and androgynous territory. Krizia's visionary, chic and at the same time, "architectural" style at its best. As minutes pass some notes vanish and it focuses on a super dry, dusty leather-woody-mossy accord. A must for all leather fragrances lovers. Simple, beautiful packaging.

8,5-9/10