Nowadays I have this love-hate relationship with the House of Frederic Malle. They have done (and still do) beautiful perfumes, of course, but the brand has gotten so mainstream and everyone knows about it now that it has lost its niche status for me. It used to be just available at certain stores (only Barney’s) but now everywhere you turn it’s there – Nordstrom, Bloomingdales, you name it.  It’s as ubiquitous as Jo Malone, and its exclusivity is long gone. So it took me a while to sample ‘Music For A While.’ But I have been reading a lot of best of lists from 2018 and this has been showing up a lot, so I had to see for myself.

It’s very nice. It has a lavender base, so it skews masculine, but it has a pineapple note. It’s a mixture of a generic barbershop scent but with a modern ‘Aventus’ twist. There’s a roughness to it – a lot of patchouli shows up on my skin, and if you ask me, it really does skew more masculine. It’s also very crowd-pleasing – there’s no edge to it, and with the Malle price points, I want something that will make it more unique. I think what is missing is the ‘wow’ factor. I enjoyed it, but it failed the ‘hyperventilation’ test for me. I wasn’t craving it afterwards.

But then again, I know that the house has started doing 1 oz ‘travel bottles’ recently, so perhaps I might be tempted, but nah, I can think of other Malle releases I would get first.

(Update – I am writing this now hours later and there is this beautiful pineapple drydown that is just wonderful. Plus, about 7 hours after, it is still going strong – this scent is tenacious! And now I want this!)