New, Hermes Barenia. I wouldn’t have minded it 20 years ago, but today it smell ike an uninteresting throwback. The blackcurrant note is tarte but I prefer the way that it’s more mellow in Diptyque’s L’Ombre Dans L’Eau. This smells like an 80’s chypre, but they’ve updated the oakmoss with Akigalawood, a synthetic molecule adjacent to herbaceous patchouli. Akigalawood is strong and durable, overtaking more subtle parts of perfumes that it’s in. It makes its presence known and once I smell it, I have difficulty not smelling it. It’s one of those smells that you either love or hate. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
So while Barenia doesn’t reinvent the 80’s chypre perfumes, it recreates them with updated materials that might impress the noses of today – people looking for presence and longevity rather than anything new and interesting. I hope that this brings back the 80’s chypre genre, but I won’t be reaching for this one. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Instead of buying a bottle of Barenia, I’ll take out some of my old-school 80’s perfumes and wear those. If you’ve got lots of perfume, you’ll have a hard time being impressed with this one. ⠀⠀⠀⠀
