Sybaris
Antonio Puig (1988)

Sybaris is a big perfume. To me, it is impressively animalic (or some equivalent). Super-powered with the stuff. And then there's a bit of sugar and spice to make the flavor. It starts sort of like Armani, with a screaming animalic that's enough to make me chuckle.

I like it. It's an exciting perfume to have such a big presence, but to still be mostly sweet and loveable. It's sort of like Aramis JHL. I probably like this more than JHL.

Sybaris has no remnants of what the inexperienced nose would describe as "old" "dated" "80s" and so on that many beautiful old-school fragrances undeservingly get slapped with. The blending of the notes is superme. No rough edges. Perfectly wearable today. A rich, green, spicy aromatic fougere with a warm, smoky and wood base. It is a highly-intelligent 80s-style fragrance that successfully blends into something far greater than it's individual elements. It is the scent for a man who quietly accepts the nerve of manliness. Like a long-haired dude wearing mirror shades and a claret velvet sport jacket, who drives a Lancia, and doesn't give a damn about what others might think of him.

The opening of Sybaris is a nice burst of aldehydes, mandarin orange, cinnamon, juniper and cumin and it is strong, almost bracing. The overture is further punched up with some artemesia and pine needles. It begins swirling notes and passing from spicy, to green, to slightly floral, it's an intriguing mix and keeps the wearer pleased and engaged. This scent then brings on this wave of cloves, geranium and incense. The bergamot and lemon kick in to give this scent some freshness and some added brightness. Lastly, we are met with a smooth leather moosy and sandalwood. This is not your typical potentially overbearing powerhouse - this is a bit special.

This is absolutely STUNNING.

From the opening to its last traces on the skin, Sybaris is a phenomenal experience punctuated with notes that accentuate the animal magic of man's (or woman's) chemistry: cumin, cloves, cinnamon, artemisia—a bewitching concoction.

So many textures resulting in a brilliant synergy: supple, sexy, erotic, pulsating with all the divine smells of the earth: animal, vegetable, and mineral.

There is a roundness however, that sets it apart from other shape-shifting chypres, no spikes that reach out an accost the nose; it's all smooth and sauve, with a wink suggesting a naughty side.

Sybaris has been on my list to get for many years and especially in a splash bottle. Now after obtaining a 6.7 oz bottle the bottom of the box says this is "a Quorum designs
product"...so this is a follow-up scent. Also a copyright year of 1987.

On opening a bit of lemon that fades away only to be taken over by honey, amber, and a little oakmoss. I'm reminded of Boss Number One (1985) at this point, but way lighter. Then this develops a very animalic quality of musk combined with a powdery and semi-soapy jasmine...very identical to Stetson (1981). Hints of cinnamon or leather on occasion in later hours of wear but not really consistent.

Sybaris smells good but it's not an original design. It was a collaboration or experiment on fusing what was pleasant from a few 80's fragrances. If I stumbled across Sybaris and wasn't familiar with 80's scents I would have given it a thumbs up.

I personally have an extremely high praise for this scent that took me many wearings to fully appreciate 'and' to understand this composition. Sybaris is very well constructed with quality ingredients, extremely well in fact. So much so that iI'm going to state that this perfume is a hidden masterpiece. You can tell that this is from the same house as Quorum as it has that 'Puig' smell to it. It's the jasmine/patchouli combo that hooks me in this and once you catch it, you'll be in love as well. This cinnamon accord pulls everything together while the incense note in this is amazing.

Sybaris is deceiving so understand this before wearing some. This is actually a 'very' strong scent with a considerable amount of sillage and projection that lasts forever on the skin. I was wearing a few tiny spritzes of this the other day, as in not even full on sprays and my co-worker had inquired as to what I was wearing while she was standing at least 6 feet away and this was well past 4 hours after applying. She loved it but couldn't explain it.

This is a sweetened, ambered, spiced, soapy, slightly floral and woody patchouli affair supported by a deep clove note. It's a complex pyramid that waxes and wanes from powdery, to soapy, to aromatic, balmy, clean and even to dirty and animalic at times. Sometimes it's dusty and cloudy and other times what you're perceiving is clean, clear and fresh. Honestly this is a very complex scent that's hard to grasp but totally enjoyable.

It's very warm and comforting, strong on the oakmoss. There's also an animalic 'something' in this, I swear. It smells like civet or maybe even castoreum especially when first sprayed but whatever it is, it's definitely animalic in feel. I really like this a lot, it's a complicated and pleasurable smell with some beautiful sillage, very masculine. Super fun to wear because you're always smelling something new. The soapiness in this from the jasmine flower is just awesome and the strength of this stuff is killer. Sybaris is a definite 80's powerhouse.

This review is based on an original formula splash flacon with a pre-barcode box from 1986 that's been decanted into an atomizer.

A blast from the past...opens very animalic to my nose for just a couple of minutes...then I get this aromatic cloud of a citrus melange flavored with pungent herbs...love this enough to have grabbed a large backup bottle...something I want as a permanent member of my wardrobe...very classy...cousin to Jules and Lauder for men...brother to Boss Number One and Tenere...has that spice/flower flavored honey thing going on...also has a close relationship to Versailles...dries down to a nice comforting oakmossy vanilla...bottom line - aromatic spicy green...respect...

Sybaris by Antonio Puig (1988) at first glance comes across like something futuristic, since the name itself and the bottle shape both evoke the feeling of 80's science fiction, but the reality of the scent is that it's a semi-conventional (for the time) masculine follow-up to the ever-popular animalic tobacco moss monster known as Quorum (1982). Sybaris would be Puig's late-to-the-party answer to Jacques Bogart One Man Show (1980) and Yves Saint Laurent Kouros (1981), in that raunchy and compressed, super-tight and well-blended macho-in-a-bottle style. We were reaching the apex of the powerhouse by the mid-eighties and Sybaris' direct competition would be stuff like the legendary Lapidus Pour Homme by Ted Lapidus (1987), which was a much sweeter scent that rode similar rails but had that "X factor" which made it an early prototype for what we now call clubber fragrances. The biggest asset of Sybaris was this warmth and subtle charm it had, as it's a scent that just hums along after the loud opening rather than screams its presence with every pang of body heat. Puig wouldn't really make another masculine in this powerhouse style, nor make another mainstream masculine with an oriental base containing real Mysore sandalwood besides Paco Rabanne Ténéré (1988), so at least this was quality. If I seem like I'm being vague, it's because Sybaris is a really hard fragrance to talk about, as it just has this animalic backhand introduction that then moves into something very much like a modern Middle-Eastern fragrance but done with 80's macho sensibilities borrowed from the West.

Sybaris opens with a whole spread of well-mixed citrus and herbs, including lemon, manadarin, basil, aldehydes and a dirty cumin note which gives this juice that virile kick, then moves into spices, light woods, and florals. Jasmine indole, cinnamon, geranium, and artemisia are all pretty much stock masculine elements that merge into a dry semi-sweet warmth after the opening pimp slap. The oriental base of olibdanum, amber, oakmoss, patchouli, sandalwood, and vetiver is joined by labdanum and civet, pulling this slightly into chypre territory for the dry down, but not enough to take away it's oriental richness. Sybaris goes on a teeny bit scary like a Kouros Jr. at first, but soon shifts through smooth spice, woods, and ends in that sandalwood-forward base, making it a kinder and gentler experience overall than many in it's vein. I'd classify Sybaris as something of an 80's in-betweener, a scent that straddled two different distinct styles with the touch of a third, and in this instance the early 80's chest hair masculinity with the late 80's/early 90's semi-oriental phase kicked off by scents like Chanel Bois Noir/Égoïste (1987/1990), with a bit of chypre animalics at the end to keep it smelling like early 20th century French perfume in the end. Sybaris is a scent that favors longevity of 12+ hours over sillage, and although not a generalist, is more relaxed after the opening goes away, being best in cooler fall and spring months. Sybaris is among the more wearable animalic powerhouses from the era even compared to lauded greats like Chanel Antaeus (1981), which only really beats Sybaris in the blending department.

Sybaris is sheer quality, but really lacks the distinct personality it's crazy name and cool bottle promises, in order to be any sort of memorable outside collectors of 80's masculines. Sybaris is unique in what it mixes together; it posseses a funky opening with a relaxing, creamy middle, and a semi-dry glow of a gorgeous sandalwood finish, but "niche" as a fragrance concept didn't exist yet in the mind of most buyers, so being any kind of "niche" in tone just meant being misunderstood and discontinued. One thing is for certain: fans of stiff macho 80's fragrances, Mysore sandalwood, and animalic chypres will see this as all that they love thrown into a blender and hit with the frappe button. Again, this juice has its small clutch of staunch fans, and as one of them, I can say that if Sybaris fires on all cylinders for you like it does me, you don't even need a long exposition about why. But from an objective point of view, Sybaris doesn't blow the doors off and may be of more interest just for being an early co-composition of Alberto Morillas, who joined Puig perfumer Rosendo Mateu in developing it. A similar dry down can be had in the aforementioned Paco Rabanne Ténéré, but that's not entirely an adequate replacement due to its floral fougère nature. Sybaris is like what every millennial imagines "dad's cologne" to smell like, with a bracing sour take-no-prisoners opening that then moves through wet shaving tones and "musky" base which both smells cozy and alarmingly like it wants to ask you on a date simultaneously. With solid performance to boot, Sybaris makes good quarry for the discontinued treasure hunter, but is no masterpiece, as Puig itself was often the high-street alternative to the more expensive and iconic designer brands of the era. Thumbs up.

I have experienced many fragrances like Sybaris but I feel this one is exemplary in its category. It shares some strong similarities with Lalique Pour Homme (Lion) and Monsieur Carven, in that they have a strong citrus opening which quickly gives way to a vanilla-powdery, leathery, mossy base of strength not belied by the brightness of the initial stage. The first twenty minutes of Sybaris are outrageously good, and the blending is incredibly smooth. Soon, a worrisome wall of the aforementioned vanilla-powder emerges and threatens to erase the happiness of the first part. It grows in strength, or at least in noticeability, but at some blessed point begins to recede to reveal the fuzzy moss and leather base that ruled the 80's, its hairy chest bared with pride. And as the vetiver and olibanum poke out at intervals to wave hello I am reminded of many happy fragrances - Red for Men, Halston Limited, Gambler...

I'll stop there. I could have just said, "I really, really like this."

Michael Edwards classifies Sybaris as a woody oriental scent, and several reviewers here place it with the leather chypres, but I smell a brawny fougère, boasting ample aromatic content, soapy aldehydes, and bittersweet citrus in the top notes. Cumin, artemisia, and conspicuous animalic notes closely align Sybaris with grand 1980s animalic/aromatic fougères like Jules and Lauder for Men, but Sybaris evolves in a distinctive sweet, spiced, woody direction.

At its heart, Sybaris offers a tightly integrated accord of nutty vetiver, smooth sandalwood and amber that's at once comfortable and highly dignified. The opening animalic elements retreat somewhat, but their lingering background presence safeguards against a slide from comfort into stodginess. At the same time, quiet echoes of artemisia, geranium, and juniper provide bracing counterpoint to the amber's sweetness.

Sybaris is potent, but not overwhelming, with generous sillage and admirable lasting power. After several hours of sustained heart notes, the drydown settles into amber, labdanum, and vetiver, seasoned with leathery and mossy grace notes. While it smells not a bit like either, Sybaris is one of the few scents I know that capture the sense of masculine dignity found in Patou pour Homme or the original Santal Noble. It doesn't necessarily exude the same sense of occasion, but that may only make it a bit more versatile and comfortable for daily wear. I have no idea whether Sybaris is still in production, but it can still be found online for very little money and is very much worth trying.

Vintage Sybaris I've been wanting to try this for a while and I am very thankful for a nice decant from my good friend, Dimitrios. I have to say that it truly has a wonderful unique, green chypre/leather vibe. The house of Puig has some great scents - this is one of very high quality. The feeling of the scent is very natural. A vibrant, fresh, green chypre with rich notes that jump from the bottle. Very high quality ingredients in Sybaris! Interesting to note the origin of the word. Sybaris was an ancient Greek city of southern Italy on the Gulf of Taranto. Noted for its wealth and luxury, it was destroyed in warfare with Crotona in 510 b.c. I get the citrus with the Aldehydes up-front, strong and good rich opening, and it is not fizzy. The basil is nice - green, but earthy, further enhanced be a very nice cumin note (works very well here). The Artemisia and Juniper in the heart join the top quickly and dominate the heart. I do smell some light florals, with a nice sprinkling of cinnamon. Sandalwood comes through toward the end of the heart - not loud, but smooth. The initial base note that came to me was the Oakmoss, but then I resprayed from atomizer (as I first dabbed on some to test) and found that Olibanum actually comes up and meets the Sandalwood in the late heart (a light smokiness forms), followed by a blend of herbaceous, green Patchouli and lichen (Oakmoss) that is very well-presented. Vetiver shows here as a woody note - not a major player, but precise and a bit sharp. The Olibanum is further warmed by Amber in the base which is really a smoldering ember under all this foiliage and wood...but it works well to enhance accords. The final note, is the key...a green, woody chypre/leather composition with the leather being a bit tattered. Not heavy birch tar, but significant depth here. I will say that the green notes are more dominant to me and lean towards a green woody chypre as a classification, but the leather is like that of a worn saddle. It completes the scent. Riding on horseback through the Pyrennes at dusk with rancher's homes warmed by a wood-burning stove - wisps of smoke drift in the air. This is not a loud scent, but a well-crafted one. It warms to the body and wears very natural...the vibe is definitively Spanish, muy clasico! Moderate silage and, from a layered sample, good longevity. Masculine and a bit rigorous - would wear wonderfully outdoors on a veranda having dinner. I will refrain from comparing it to other scents as it has a uniqueness - but feels comfortable. One could wear this formally or casual (but still upscale)...for a mature and confident man. Recommended. Salud!

Aldehydes, mandarin, with lots of green notes spruced up by generous lashings of cumin - an opening that utilised rather disparate components nut nonetheless works together splendidly. A delightful start, a bit tangy but smoothing soon.

The drydown is dominated by jasmine, carnation and geranium, in a classic chypre combination that is scintillatingly expressing the characteristics of a typical chypre, but applied in a special way. Artemisia - with whiffs of vetiver - develops a bit later, but becomes quite strong over time.

Further down the track, the plot no really thickens. The star of the next act is a lovely oakmoss - the real thing, a bit zesty not not really sharp on me - this is no Gucci Nobile. the moss goes in tandem with an impressive patchouli, which, again, ins not particularly shark, and is endowed with a spicy cinnamon sweetness of a nigh oriental character in the background.

After that, the base develops a pleasant and slightly tannin-strong leather impression, and together with the patchouli and the oakmoss I get an impressive finale.

I get moderate sillage, excellent projection, and a longevity that varied in the different samples of different years I tried; the worst one was two hours, the bes one over eight eight hours.

A fresh and green fougere with a touch of leather. Rich, full of details, composed of top-class ingredients and with a beautifully zesty-sweet-fresh-spicy bright balance. Traditional and definitely worth seeking out. 4/5

The Baron de Charlus once told me: "I recall the time when I was a houseguest at the London apartment of Oscar Wilde. He gave us each a bottle of Sybaris eau de toilette from the House of Puig.

'You know, de Charlus,' the celebrated wit, poet and playwright informed me, 'although I prefer the opening notes of the golden oil of Sybaris - sensual, seductive, ancient, barbaric - to its later leathery denouement, I still believe I arrived at the definitive summation of this fragrance when I said that it was as if Oscar Wilde had met Attila the Hun in the harem of an Oriental prince. A rather fine description, don't you think?' ' Indeed I do, my dear Oscar,' I assured him, 'so fine a description that I wish I had thought of it myself. But, come to think of it, I believe I did describe it in just such terms several years ago, as a passing remark on Sybaris in a review of Puig's Boston Man. Perchance you read my review and, in a moment of confusion, have attributed it to your good self?'

Somewhat piqued by this information, and no doubt also by the snickering it elicited from his bosom companion, Lord Alfred "Bosie" Douglas, the great man snatched back the bottle of Sybaris which he had given me and demanded that I leave his house forthwith."