Playing with the Devil
By Kilian (2013)

The first two or three hours are beautiful, with an enchanting rose, orange, litchi, peach and black current accord; more floral than non-sweet fruit, it sings a light-handed graceful song.
So the fact that it has an ending that turns flat after 3-1/2 hours and non-beautiful after 4-1/2 hours is very disappointing. It's ending has a synthetic generic harshness that has little to do with the rest of the fragrance.
What do you do with these type of fragrances that have a smashing half-life before becoming uninteresting and disappearing? I dislike this type of perfume enough, it's a testament to its early beauty that I ordered a decant just to smell the first three hours. But in spite of my doing so, I can't give this fragrance a thumbs-up. To By Kilian: less fragrances, more attention to quality.

It's lovely, but lasts for maybe an hour before becoming imperceptible. Might be because at the same time I was also smelling some stronger fragrances and this was the most subtle, but honestly I want my scents to linger. The hour it lasted for it was very nice though.

The opening is everything I was hoping for based on my whiff of this stuff in the store, but once dried down it winds up smelling just like j'adore to me. Longevity was decent but nothing spectacular. Your money would be better served elsewhere since this has nothing particularly unique to offer.

Bright and lively opening… peachy-lychee… as usual I don't smell the pepper, The pepper would have improved the opening, because it is too brightly fruity for my tastes. The opening has good lasting power.

After thirty or forty minutes I begin picking up the heart notes – May rose, I think – then cedar – then patchouli. I kind of enjoy the woody vibe of the patchouli until I realize that that's pretty much all I'm going to experience... nothing more is going to happen. The heart accord is soft and textured rather than a projecting accord. I don't think it's interesting enough to hold attention for very long.

And then the drydown… as a dry down it's simply the tapering down of the middle accord until it dies of boredom. Nothing very excited about Playing with the Devil.

In the beginning I get a fairly strong peachy opening, combined with lychee and a fairly nondistinct berry aroma. This trio is executed quite all right.

The drydown begins with a mix of pepper and a sweet-sour rendition of blood orange, that brings out the restrained citrus with only a subtle hint of spiciness added. Some anaemic floral notes try to break through, but fall victim to the dominant dyad.

All this might be quite acceptable, if it was not was not drowned out by the onrolling wave of base notes, especially the ultra-synthetic and dull woodsy patchouli, which takes over to the detriment of the previously present componenents, and remains
in the foreground until the end. This hyper-artificial finale brings this creation down to a few notches below from where it started. At this stage some of David Beckham's products, for instance, are not less convincing that this creation of one of the most prominent representatives of the Cognac Family affiliated with LVMH.

The perfomance is similarly lukewarm, with soft sillage, limited projection and six hours of longevity on my skin.

In the end this is too much composed of ingredients whose blend develops in a manner that is not only overly synthetic, but too generic and un-individual. It is not a bad scent, neither too sweet nor cloying, but too close to mediocrity to warrant a thumbs-up. 2.5/5.