Day off work today, so I went, again, for some fragrance testing. This time I managed to get a full wear spray of Fifty Four by Jusbox. These niche Italians make a lot of music-themed fragrances, and pair each with a playlist. Fifty Four is a collab with YouTube perfume content creator The Perfume Guy, and the name comes from the seminal New York disco club of the Seventies. I absolutely LOVE this fragrance. Spicy-boozy-tropical-fruity off the top, with Pina Colada and Cardamom, which mellows through a sugary sweet deliciousness into a boozy woodsy smoky delight. Lots going on, and all of it good. I've got a full bottle on my radar. One annoyance is that I'd love a discovery set as they have a voucher-off-a-bottle-with purchase thing going on, but the house ship to everywhere in the world except the UK (stupid stupid stupid Brexit). They have a wonderful selection of fragrances, but I can't get my hands on any of them at a sample level. I've sent them emails to try and melt their Italian hearts, to no avail. Just as well really, my second-favourite fragrance of theirs is Micro Love, and I could never in good conscience buy a fragrance that evokes U2.

When I heard that the perfumer for my beloved Outlands, Cecile Zarokian, was also behind Creed’s Oud Zarian, I wanted to get my nose on it. Sniffed it off paper strip in a Bloomingdales —> loved it. Got a decant of it —> two test wears later, ordered a bottle. Today was my first full wear from my new bottle, which is a beautiful frosted deep dark brown that matches the richness of the scent. There are definitely some similarities to Outlands — not necessarily that this smells like Outlands, but it absolutely reminds me of it, and certainly many of the notes and overall vibe that make me love Outlands make me love this one too. Honestly, my nose isn’t refined enough to pick out individual notes in something blended this well - what I can say is it’s just a deliciously warm, lightly sweet rich spicy scent, with a hint of a refined non-stinky oud note (and no, I don’t care if it’s real Oud or not, let alone some alleged 80-year-old rare oud variety). Compared to Outlands, I’d say it is more elegant, doesn’t have some of the screechy edge that Outlands can have (which I think it might be from an incense note), and it’s certainly more linear — but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. There is a hint of a licorice note in here that I’m also enjoying – I think it goes well with the spice blend. I am shocked at how beastly the performance is. I applied nine hours ago and I am still getting whiffs of it - and for the first five hours this thing was radiating off of me like crazy. I’m not sure this is office safe, but at least compared to Outlands I’d say it is more versatile in terms of being more wearable by day or in warmer weather (I would not wear this in the heat of summer though). I’m absolutely happy with this purchase (only possible because it was at steep discount, of course) and to have this in my small collection. I know this offering got a lot of hate online, but I’m really enjoying it. Cecile is batting 1000 in my book. It’s probably redundant versus my Outlands, but I love them both enough to make an exception and I think there are definitely different occasions where I can wear them. And I can still use Rayhan Terra to scratch the itch in between so that I don’t burn through those bottles.