Notes fragrance notes
Head
- bergamot, clary sage
Heart
- geranium, orange flower
Base
- oakmoss, vetiver, tonka bean
Where to buy
Latest Reviews of Notes


The opening of Notes does clearly smell like Le Mâle through an antique looking glass, as if someone was trying to make a modernized male version of L'Heure Bleue by Guerlain (1912), but when you use mint and orange blossom next to the bergamot and the clary sage in the top, you're only two notes away from replicating that anyway. The heart quickly differentiates itself from Le Mâle by going in that aforementioned 80's direction of having a thick honeyed lavender and geranium with costus, a smell close to labdanum in it's pasty musky quality that gets the IFRA regulatory backhand these days, but can still be used with workarounds. All of this brings Notes closer to Lapidus pour Homme (1987) minus the pineapple, which is further cemented by a fat and musky oakmoss/tonka base supplemented by smoky vetiver. The final dry down of Notes de Robert Piguet is cleaner than a typical 80's fougère, muskier and richer than a typical 90's fougère (even one that rides the clubber wave like Le Mâle did), but has this certain sonorous X-factor that can only be described by the way it transitions yet simultaneously sort of doesn't. You get a singular minty sweet musky orange blossom accord from start to finish, but lavender, tonka, oakmoss, and vetiver sort of do occasional harmonization with it, off and on. Fougère fans looking for a left-of-center signature that will grab attention will like this, but what kind of attention it grabs will vary. Notes feels versatile enough for all seasons like most of the things it riffs off of, except for extreme heat. Performance is also well above acceptable and I'd say this is safe for work if you use it with strict moderation, but too much and that honeyed musk will come out and bite your coworkers in places they never knew they had.
The big deal breaker for this style will be price, because both bottles of Lapidus and Le Mâle can each be bought at discounters for less than half of what a bottle of Notes sells for at retail. Like many Piguet scents, this one also does not really get heavily discounted or even sold at discounters much, and when it appears at 50% off (at the most), it is still just a few dollars shy of $100, meaning diligent shoppers can still do better. Also, do we really need another what if scenario perfume? In this case it would almost certainly be: What if one of the 80's biggest clubbers merged with one of the 90's biggest clubbers? The only catch is both have to be fougères, so that narrows the field to Lapidus versus Le Mâle. Add touches of the soapiness found in the heart of Yves Saint Laurent Kouros (1981) and a drier orange blossom note like you'd find in an antique fragrance such as Etiquette Bleue by Parfums D'Orsay (1908) for appropriate "timelessness", and you get Notes de Robert Piguet. What a long strange trip it's been, and like a Grateful Dead tribute band playing songs spanning the original band's career, most younger people stumbling into what passes now as a modern interpretation by perfumer Aurélien Guichard of riffs written across time by other perfumers are just left gobsmacked regardless of where their tastes lie. Samples are easy to come by even if retail product at a good price is not, so I recommend sampling this dead mall in a bottle with an appropriate vaporwave soundtrack and a VHS player queued up with your favorite never-returned Blockbuster tape rental. Thumbs up.
ADVERTISEMENT

P.S: Dry down is pretty good, really spicy, resinous-aromatic, kind of more "restrained", luxurious and virile (in a sort of amberish and "dirty-sweated" way). In this phase I detect many points in common with the Bugatti Pure Black's dry down. I detect a sort of rubbery/salty/ambery/nutty vibe surrounded by piquant spices, clary sage and kind of birch tar (or aromatic spices in general).
P.S 2: I disagree about the assumed short evolution of this fragrance and the deep dry down is finally on my skin really close to the Ungaro III's base notes, being it so nutty-tonkinian, mossy, woody-rosey, spicy-rooty, "by vetiver-influenced" and mossy-amberish. Ungaro III and Piguet Notes (which is anyway initially different, more minty-aromatic and spicy) share indeed a lot of notes as oakmoss, clary sage, vetiver, geranium, rosewood, amber, coriander, mild spices, aromatic patterns, neroli, bergamot, etc etc.


If only Mr Piguet woke up and saw this very poor fragrance...
Thumbs down!

4/10
(I forgot to specify that after the first sniff nothing changes for hours)


I haven't smelled all of the new Robert Piguet line, but having both Calypso and Notes in the same line seems a mistake. Although they don't smell particularly alike, the similarity of their construction is close enough that they fill the same slot, and neither is a stellar perfume. Calypso is a 21st-century Cool Water and Notes is a spin on Jean Paul Gautier's le Male.
The new Robert Piguet line seems intended for a younger, less perfume-experienced buyer than their Futur and Fracas buyers. Oddly for Aurélien Guichard, a technical master with a particular proficiency in balancing linear and traditional forms, Notes and Calypso both come off as rather monophonic. It's possible that the perfumer aimed low and hit lower still, hoping for the perfume equivalent of a catchy pop song, but winding up with a jingle.
