9PM Elixir Intense

Cardamom and nutmeg arrive first, dry and resinous rather than sweet, with elemi lending a faint pine-and-lemon-peel bite that keeps the spice from turning powdery too early. None of the fruity sugar that opened the original 9PM shows up here. Within about fifteen minutes pimento pushes through alongside a soft, suede-like leather, and lavender draws a clean aromatic line straight across the middle so the composition never collapses into syrup. The dry-down is where the Elixir name earns itself: vanilla thickened with labdanum and rock rose, patchouli underneath adding damp earth and a faintly boozy weight. What you are left with after a few hours is warm, spicy, slightly powdery and quite obviously built for after dark. This is a cold-weather, after-six fragrance. It suits men and women equally, though it reads a little more traditionally masculine in the first hour. Cape winter evenings, dinners, weddings and anything that involves a jacket are its natural home; wear it in February on the coast and the spice-vanilla combination can feel heavy and cloying. Two sprays is genuinely enough. Performance is good without being absurd. The opening two or three hours project strongly, after which it draws into a close, warm halo that stays detectable for six to eight hours on the skin, and far longer than that on a shirt collar. As an extrait-strength concentration it rewards restraint. On the question everyone asks: reviewers most often place 9PM Elixir next to Jean Paul Gaultier Le Male Elixir rather than the Ultra Male comparison that follows the original 9PM around. The shared territory is real enough, both are sweet-spicy vanillas with a leathery spine, but this is not a spray-for-spray copy. Afnan's version is louder, sweeter and less polished in the opening, and the lavender is more prominent. If you already own the Gaultier you will notice the differences quickly; if you have only smelled it on other people, this delivers a very similar impression for a small fraction of the outlay. Judged on its own terms rather than as a stand-in, it is one of the more interesting things Afnan has released recently.