Halloween Man X

This was an impulse purchase after watching a few reviews that commended its originality.  Based on the notes listed on Fragrantica, I was very interested since everything in there appealed to me.

• Top Notes: Lavender, Cardamom, Lemon
• Middle Notes: Coffee, Whiskey, cinnamon. Leather, Mineral notes
• Base Notes: Tonka Bean, Incense, Amber

Yeah, you see it too right?!  Based on that, I went ahead and placed an order for a bottle on FragranceX which had the best price that day ($40 CND with shipping)

Shipping through FragranceX has been very quick at just about a week.

Halloween Man is somewhat of an odd name for a fragrance house, but who am I to comment on that.  If anything, it seduced my inner Goth. The man behind the brand is Jesus Del Pozo who was a Spanish Designer.  As per Wikipedia, he past away in 2011.  Halloween Man X was launched in 2019 and is the creation of Nicolas Beaulieu.

Presentation wise, this fragrance comes in an elegant and modern looking box.  The bottle follows in those footsteps while bringing further support to the Halloween Man brand – manly darkness being the main theme.  For my taste, this presentation is splendid.

Onto the fragrance

I’ll just blurt it out and we’ll go from there.  If I had smelt this in a store beforehand, I would not have bought it. Based on the above notes, how could that be…?  To my nose lavender is taking over like a Dictator.  There are other elements taming the lavender a little, but… It is as if all of the other participants are so blended together that they are no longer recognizable.  I was very disappointed! The result feels like is a fairly common arrangement.

I was nearly incapable of identifying majority of the notes that motivated me to buy this fragrance; coffee, whiskey, cinnamon, leather, tonka bean, amber… this is what I was hoping to indulge in.  As mentioned above, the lavender takes over along with a powdery presence.  Then there is leather, but it comes out poorly. Lastly, there is a very distant sweetness which must be the amber.

Considering that this fragrance came out in 2019 it doesn’t smell new to me. In many ways, I feel like I have read this story a few times before.

The regulars already know that Mrs. Style4men is asthmatic and that certain fragrances trigger outbreaks.  This one did not cause an attack, but she did not like it.

On the topic of potency or duration, it gets full marks as only shot on my forearm was enough for me to smell it for a number of hours.  In that sense the quality is certainly there.

To sum things up

As promising as the packaging and star participants are, this is not one I will be wearing.