I can’t quite get hold of Unfiltered 6. It feels like I am being told a story, rather than living one.

I am one step removed from the experience, behind a pierced wooden screen. I am not sitting in the open-to-the-skies courtyard garden, but reading on an upper floor, occasionally looking down through the star patterns of the balcony, enjoying the buzz of lazy, comfortable chat, rich with laughter, but I can’t make out the words. It smells wonderful –layers of scents rising from trees blooming below, the jasmine tendrilling up the pillars. Someone is eating marzipan.

Perhaps I have been ruined by expectations. bogue profumo Unfiltered 6 is a perfectly lovely fragrance –gorgeous even– but it does feel filtered. Like it’s on its best meeting the potential in-laws for the first time manners, and it’s promised not to swear or tell scurrilous stories about the times it ran away to the circus or ran for parliament, nor take its shoes off and try to explain its burning theories about the correlation between astronomy and storytelling through dance.

Forgive me, Antonio, but this feels like Bogue for Beginners. It’s a smooth, rich floral swirl, oozing quality, but maybe for someone who is a little overwhelmed by the immersive complexity of your other fragrances. It’s a beautiful evening, but now I am greedy and want more than mere beauty.

originally posted 30 June 2019