Clive Christian’s L for Men Woody Oriental with Deep Amber diverges quite a bit from the original L for Men - a bright explosion of citrus against spice - by placing most of the focus on woods. And what a beautiful specimen of wood it is: oily, buttery, with the underbite of a greenish spice that the notes list tells us is pepper (but our noses defiantly peg as cardamom). Strangely enough, there’s no wood listed either, so we credit perfumer Mike Parrot for being able to root out the woodiest elements of tobacco, pepper, lavender, maple, and cade, and unite them all for the cleanest, smoothest woods extravaganza that we’ve smelled in a while.

lemon, mandarin, pepper, lavender, geranium, magnolia, jasmine, orris, amber, tobacco, musk, maple, cade