Dark Season
Neil Morris Fragrances

I wish I could find a full bottle somewhere because I love this! Dark Season is all over the place, which (in most fragrances) is not always a good thing. In this, it is what keeps Dark Season so mysterious. It's definitely sweet but not sickening.

My description is going to sound very strange but it's what I smell. Dark Season takes me back to some pleasant memory in my childhood but I'm not exactly sure what. It does reminds me of outdoors in the Piney Woods of East Texas. I can smell the cold air blowing through the thick woods with a mix of all different types trees and lots of pine. I get a slight hint of mushrooms and gasoline fumes that is a good smell.
I use to get in trouble for smelling my dads zippo lighter but I loved the way the fumes smelled and would sneak a tiny quick sniff every so often. I can smell that too in the background of this fragrance. I smell the inside cellophane from a brand new unsmoked pack of my dads Kent 100 cigarettes. I get cinnamon, patchouli and vanilla that comes and goes the whole time from first spray to the dry down. I'm telling you Dark Season is all over the place...but in a good way.

I am so thankful for my sample and the opportunity to try this! I would have really missed out on something unique. I'm trying to savor every last drop since it can't be found!

I don't like this scent at all. I do detect a piney, Christmas tree-like note in this, but it's buried under a choking, sweet cinnamon and vanilla accord. I like dry, transparent coniferous scents, not something heavy and syrupy like this. I was expecting something so much better, considering how excellent Neil Morris' Gandhara is.

Perhaps if this were named differently I wouldn't be as averse to it. With a name like "Dark Season", I thought this would smell like a walk through the forest. Instead, this is smells like I'm walking into a Yankee Candle store in a mall.

MY RATING: 3/10

Dark Season is a lightly spiced spruce that quickly sinks into an ambery-oriental accord based around patchouli, labdanum, and a subtle vanilla. Spruce is tamed here, and the sharp, sinus-clearing qualities of essential oil are minimized in favor of an edgeless conifer note. The base is handled deftly, never becoming the thick, oriental swamp it could be with those notes. Dark Season sounds ominous in name, but it's warm, inviting fragrance, welcoming you in from the winter cold rather than sending you out into it.I'm surprised at the reviews that find this odd and conceptual. To my nose, it's one of the most approachable in the line, quite removed from olfactory oddities like Dark Earth, and a close cousin of many older mainstream masculines. If Polo could be mellowed out to a state of unrecongizability and given a bit of gourmand window-dressing, it would smell something like Dark Season.

I found the drydown of this to be quite similar to "super cheapo" Cuba Orange, though they are not identical. I like Cuba Orange better overall, though, so you can probably guess that I won't be spending money on a bottle of Dark Season. If you feel yourself becoming ill at the thought of purchasing Cuba Orange, try Rochas Lui, which still should save you more than a few dollars. I'll give this a positive rating, though, because I don't take price into account. Sillage and longevity seemed good, if not better. I'll also suggest Etro's Messe de Minuit, which is not quite as similar as the other two but also worth considering if you like these kinds of fragrances (I do).