In my experience to date, the DSH perfumes I have tried have been very nice, but rather fleeting on my skin. I'm dabbing from vials, so that might be part of the reason, but I feel like I want more from them, and in order to do that, they need to hang around a bit longer.
I think I've found one that ticks the right boxes in Vintage Patchouly. The notes (from DSH website) include bergamot, rosewood, East Indian patchouli, Moroccan rose absolute, Mysore sandalwood, amber, Australian sandalwood, ambergris, benzoin, ciste absolute, Himalayan cedar, moss and tobacco absolute. Now this is quite a list of notes. To be honest, thinking about it now I can detect the sandalwood and tobacco, but to my mind the patchouli is so beautiful and distinctive that it easily overshadows everything else in the composition. When I think of some of my favourite patchoulis, I think in particular of Borneo 1834, Lui, Patchouli Noir and to a lesser extent, Coromandel. Vintage Patchouly to my mind takes the best of all of these, and then in the dry down exhibits some of the more animalic characteristics evident in Lombre Fauvre.
Vintage Patchouly starts off as a fairly sweet, woody patchouli. This woodiness might come from the rosewood. Just underneath this, as the patchouli comes to the fore, is a wet, earthy leaves smell, ever so slightly dank and musty. The fragrance becomes very rich and almost polished in feel and I detect what smells to me like a high quality dark chocolate, lightly sweetened and even a touch nutty. The camphor-like nature of patchouli does rear its head for a short while, but ultimately this is a smooth and rich, comforting earthy scent. The rich earthiness possibly comes from the tobacco and the smooth, slightly sweet nature from the sandalwood, but as I said earlier, patchouli is the dominant note.
In the far dry down the more animalic nature of this fragrance is revealed, no doubt partly due to the presence of the ciste. The base is dryer, and still very woody and this is the point at which Vintage Patchouly to me smells like a sexy skin scent, almost musky. The patchouli, as is often the case in my experience, toes that line between sweetly comforting and slightly disturbing, almost feral, but not quite, sexual, yet slightly old-fashioned. It's hard to explain, but what I can say is that this is a wonderful fragrance and by the far the best I have tried so far in the DSH line. It has officially joined my list of favourite patchouli fragrances. I must admit, this is full bottle worthy for me.
Image credit - https://www.dshperfumes.com/
