Dallying with Tom Ford Private Blend Tobacco Oud sent me looking for my sample of Serge Lutens Chergui. It had probably been a couple of years since I’d smelled it. When it took more than a minute to find the tiny vial in a shoebox of samples, I wondered why I was going to all the trouble. Chergui is tobacco and hay. A nice spicy oriental. I know what this one is all about, right? Wrong.
As I’ve been discovering lately with other fragrances I’ve haven’t smelled in a while, Chergui is not exactly what I remembered. Maybe it’s because I’ve sampled so many perfumes between now and the last time I sniffed Chergui and so have a larger frame of reference. Or maybe my taste is changing. But today Chergui to me smells much more complete and complex than I’d remembered…