Friends, I have told the nightmare story of my run-in with Baccarat Rouge 540 Extrait. I have sprayed fragrances that later gave me migraines. I have gone through several bottles of Irish Spring in my fragrance journey.
I have usually lasted at least one hour for all of these fragrances before throwing in the towel and scrubbing them off. My previous low was the aforementioned BR 540 at right under 30 minutes.
Then I decided to try Bogue’s MEM.
Bogue Profumo is a niche house launched in 2012, with a healthy variety of fragrances to its lineup. MEM was released in 2017, from the same nose who brought the world one of my favorite beast mode scents, Tyrannosaurus Rex from Zoologist, Antonio Gardoni.
Antonio is obviously a very talented perfumer. I’m sure Bogue has a great many fragrances I would probably like.
I did not last 10 minutes with this on my skin before I was trying to scrub it off. But before we document Kori’s quickest waved white flag of surrender, let’s take a look at the notes.
MEM Notes
Top: ALL THE LAVENDER (Blue lavender, lavender extract, lavender, wild lavender), petitgrain, mandarin orange, grapefruit.
Heart: Ylang-ylang, champaca, Damask rose, Bourbon geranium, vanilla, mint, laurels, malt
Base: Siam benzoin, ambergris, castoreum, civet, sandalwood, Palisander rosewood, Himalayan cedar, labdanum, amber, musk
Yeah, that’s a mouthful, and a lot of notes, but guess what?
Verdict
This is the most nuclear lavender scent to end all lavender scents. Here’s where this went wrong for me. I love lavender, largely because I love my Fougere fragrances. MEM is too much for me, especially when the animalic castoreum and civet are as strong as they are right out of the gate.
I couldn’t keep this on long enough to even let the other notes emerge, because I all I could think of was lavender nuclear explosion with a giant vintage, old-school skank… that was quickly turning salty. Am I proud that I couldn’t last even 10 minutes? No.
Do I take joy in having to admit I caved this quickly? Nope.
But it happened. For whatever reason, this particular combo was not sitting well with both my olfactory senses, and, once the saltiness really started to set in, especially my stomach. Y’all, I had sushi for dinner, nobody wants to see that come back up.
That said. Some of y’all, especially those of you who really like vintage, animalic dirty scents might like this quite a bit. I wanted to like it, again, I enjoy lavender and was sold on statements that this was the most revolutionary take on lavender in years.
It’s certainly a bold take.
But it’s just not going to be for me. Whether I was just caught off guard, or because I’m still a few days out from a migraine, this is unfortunately going to be stored as a not great scent memory for me.
Obviously, I’m going to strongly, strongly urge y’all to sample this before buying. You can purchase one here for $5. If you love dirty lavender, you can grab a 50 mL bottle of this for $200 from the same link.
And remember, everyone is different! Just because I struck out doesn’t mean you will! Though seriously, be prepared for a lavender explosion.
*Due to the fact I had to scrub this off so quickly, I will not be giving a standard “review” rating below. It wouldn’t be fair for me to rate the categories when I didn’t have it on long enough. But feel free to share your own fragrance trial disasters!
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The Fandomentals “Fragdomentals” team base our reviews off of fragrances that we have personally, independently sourced. Any reviews based off of house-provided materials will be explicitly stated.