Fetish pour Homme
Roja Dove (2012)

Monster chypres is my end game, it's my steely resolution, it's when I get whatever I want and no one could stop me. Simply because as a chypre junkie with a particular love for pretty much anything in this genre, Fetish pour Homme was a blind buy a few years ago (Yes, anyone who has tried Fetish will know how stupidly impulsive or perhaps a better word would be "daring").

When first I put it on, I was so not pleased with how much money I had spent on this basic masculine chypre scent that brought to mind a few cheap chypres. But as it settled in over the next little while, i started smelling the floral heart (I get rose, white floral,and jasmine) an unapologetic blast of bitter galbanum, smoky patchouli, and oakmoss notes blend in with that in such a great and... Sophisticated way in this perfume. It's nothing less than intoxicating.

The animalic notes are very low key and the leather is very civilized. With time the leather wains and it's more about the oakmoss and floral notes. If you are expecting a sweet, mainstream scent this will be a shock. It's one of those fragrances you'd wear for yourself alone. I'm just suspecting that if you wear it in the public, people around you get only a part of the composition and do that "what's that smell" face, since there is some funk in there that could remind you of body odors, some vegetal matter rotting in the green forest, or some yet. Thumbs Up!

While I love leathers in general, I like animalic notes in a perfume very much and I absolutely adore both Hermes Bel Ami and Puredistance M, I came to the conclusion, that I don’t like Roja Dove’s Fetish at all.

This perfume instantly reminds me of those very loud people, who are attention grabbers (or want to grab attention), but they have nothing to say, they’re dull. Generally speaking this is a leather-castoreum bomb on a spice kick. As simple as that. It shouts and I don’t like this perfume because of that. When it comes to composition, it opens up with a tiny blast of citruses, than the leather-castoreum bomb kicks in and it shouts (or yells) for more than 10 hours (10-16 hours on my skin) and after that a shade of spices is all what is left for the next 2 or 3 hours. All in all this is 12+hours (up to 24 hours) perfume. Sometimes it does not come off the skin after the shower and I have to scrub it off.

Resemblance? Sure. Take the Bel Ami, take out most of the ingredients from the composition, ad tons of leather (its perfectly blended chemical substitutions), castoreum, a pinch of citruses and minimal amount of woods and blend them together. There you go, you have Fetish Pour Homme Parfum.

Puredistance M on the other hand is much more spicy, leather seems to be much more exquisite and refined and is nowhere as loud as Fetish Parfum is.

Even if I wanted to have it I wouldn’t have an occasion to use it.

Excuse me, this is a no-go for me.

I tested Roja Dove Fetish pour Homme in direct comparison to Puredistance M. Considering that both are credited to Roja Dove and criticized for cloning Bel Ami, you'd think they'd smell alike. Au contraire, mon frère. Where Fetish cures its leather with a veritable symphony of aromatic spices and dark florals, M opens with a cumin-y snarl that would send Bel Ami running to find its deodorant. How droll that cumin isn't even in the pyramid, 'cuz that ain't cinnamon, kids. Ironically, M is the cat o' nine tails on the basement toy rack, while Fetish is a Helmut Newton Sumo on slightly daring display in the drawing room.

You might expect this assessment to favor M–and for some people and/or occasions, it would. But once the echoes of that snarl die down, M becomes just a dank skin scent that, while sexy in its way, is no Eau d'Hermès. Now, it really is cinnamon, albeit a dirty one, so any "thank you master may I have another" impulse requires reapplication. And it's kind of pricy to use up that quickly.

The leather in Fetish is more sumptuous, and smelling like Taschen's impeccably upholstered Helmut Newton kink all night instead of the sharp crack of M's whip for a hot 30 minutes strikes me as smart choice for most evenings, in or out.

Bel Ami [Rough Remix], bought when Roja scents were more affordable!
Great rough remix!

I pulled this out of my sample bucket and put it on blindly...At first I thought that I had grabbed myself an incense fragrance...i smelled a high pitched piney incense...after that , to me, it smells like Puredistance M flavored wiith a spicy predominately lime dirty citrus..I love citrus and I love leather , so I find this fragrance to be extremely pleasurable to my nose and worthy of my full bottle wish list...as always, exquisite ingredients and blending...for associations that come to mind , this sits somewhere between the old school lime/leather of Davidoff and the futuristic avant garde lime/leather of Christopher Street...oh , and did I mention smoke...this has a nice overall touch of smokiness...enjoy...

Alongside Danger, Fetish is probably my favorite Roja. This one is a statement maker for sure. You need to own this one rather than let it own you otherwise you could be in big trouble. There is a resemblance to HdP 1740 and to a lesser degree Interlude. They are not identical but they surely give off the same vibe and do share some of the same notes. Spice, leather, pickled lime, dirty vanilla, booze. It's all here. Could intimidate the weak.

Only for the brave of heart but really something special.