Parfums de Marly Haltane is a Woody Aromatic fragrance for men launched in 2021.
I'm a huge fan of Marley – Pegasus, Pegasus Exclusive, Layton, Layton Exclusive, Carlisle, Althair, and the list goes on and on.
And Parfums de Marly Haltane is a fragrance that contains some really interesting ingredients. has saffron, leather, praline, agarwood. It has so many enchanting ingredients.
In this article, like always, I'm going to show you guys the presentation.
I'll break the fragrance down for you a little bit, let you know how it smells, and let you know whether or not you should put this one on your PdM shortlist of fragrances to check out.
So, let's jump into it.
Presentation
The Box:
You have the name of the fragrance, the name of the house, and the size right on the front.
There's nothing on the sides.
On the back, you have a little information on the house and the concentration, Eau de Parfum.
And on the bottom, you have your batch code.
The Bottle:
And here we have the bottle done up in Harrod's colors.
So you have that nice green and gold going on, the name of the house, the name of the fragrance on the front there.
Nothing on the back.
On the bottom, you have a sticker with your batch code, and the cap does click into place.
The atomizers on PdMs were always really good.
What does Parfums de Marly Haltane smell like?
Let's first unveil the notes of the fragrance.
The top notes are Clary Sage, Lavender, and Bergamot.
The middle notes are Saffron and Praline.
Base notes are Agarwood (Oud) and Cedar.
When you first spray this on, you get hit with a wallop of spice. Warm spices.
Is there a little bit of citrus in there?
Sure, maybe, kind of lurking behind that spice. Is there a little hint of fresh aromatics in the opening, a little bit, of a slight green tinge way on the outside of the scent?
Yeah, you pick all those things up initially. But what you're going to key in on is that spice, that warmth, and this woodiness that comes out.
It's sweet; it's dark at times. It's like a hint of wood varnish underneath it all. It has this hit of sharp spice that kind of cuts through everything at times.
So you'll be smelling it, and then suddenly get blasted by it, and then it dissipates and hides again.
You got all this going on, right? And at the same time, you realize this smells a bit similar to something I've smelled before.
And yeah, it does. It smells a bit similar to “Oud for Greatness” from Initio.
So it's almost like, you know, this is Initio's version of this fragrance, and this is Parfums de Marly's version of this fragrance.
They're not the same, but if you told me that these were built off of the same structure, I would say, yeah, that makes sense.
So this one is sweet; it's a little bit of that sharp sweetness, you know?
It's not as deep and heavy and resinous. It's more like this high-tinged sweetness, praline, I guess is the official note that they're putting out there for it.
But when you smell it, you can almost pick out, like, the different parts, the different layers of the fragrance, right?
So the sweetness is mainly concentrated up here at the top, then you've got these warm spices in the middle, and then all these woods underneath it. That's kind of how it comes across.
So it is definitely sweet, but not as sweet as “Oud for Greatness,” and I would say it's, to me, anyway, much woodier than “Oud for Greatness,” even though “Oud for Greatness” has oud in the name.
As it dries down, the woodiness in the fragrance almost takes on, like, a vintage, old wooden piece of furniture kind of scent profile, or maybe even like an old wooden room or something.
And that is an imaginary note that I'm coming up with, but that's, to an extent, what it made me visualize when I was smelling it.
Almost that feeling of catching a whiff of this very old wooden structure or as I said, piece of furniture.
And it has almost a spiciness to the wood, right? And this old nature to it, almost like faint smoke wafting out from the wood because of its age.
My wife smelled it, and she said, “Yeah, I get exactly what you're smelling there, what you're saying.” But to me, it's almost like thinking back in time to my grandma's old velvet couch and then sitting down on that velvet couch and just having this almost little puff of ancient fumes coming out from the velvet couch, like years and years of existence kind of creeping through that couch as she sits down and picking up pieces of that in the air, smelling it along with the furniture itself.
So all this is just to say, I guess, in some way, you might be able to pick up a little bit of, like, an old-aged woodiness as it dries the way it comes across.
So while I would say that there's that similarity between this and “Oud for Greatness,” a similarity that I pick up on pretty much right away in the way that they're structured, they do change as they dry down a decent amount.
So Parfums de Marly Haltane concentrates more, to me, with that woodiness and that bit of praline, that sweetness over top just trying to provide a little bit of balance to that old wood and very slightly losing out as it dries down.
“Oud for Greatness” is a little bit sweeter to me, more of a medicinal fragrance between the two. And I think that the biggest similarity is the way that woodiness, especially initially, comes across with the saffron.
Now, I do need to tell you that because this does have some similarities to “Oud for Greatness,” if you wanted to, you could get, like, Afnan Supremacy in Oud or Lattafa Oud for Glory, which are clones of “Oud for Greatness.” And in a really weird, roundabout kind of way, you would have a cheaper alternative to the Parfums de Marly Haltane.
But if you wanted something sort of in the same vein, same family, same style to an extent, and you didn't have as much money to spend, you could get one of those.
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So all that said, how do I feel about the fragrance?
So the fragrance itself, I think smells great.
On a personal level, I think it smells awesome.
But that's also because I'm kind of weird, and I like that really old wooden smell that I'm, like, getting in my brain when I smell this.
If you're going into this one, you've never smelled it, and you're blindly buying it, and you're expecting it to be the next Layton or the next Sedley or Percival or something like that, just as far as extreme mass appeal, complement factor, all that stuff goes, you're probably gonna be let down.
This is not necessarily the type of fragrance DNA that is easy to wear, that's an easy-going compliment-pulling kind of scent. It's a little bit more out there as compared to some of their more mainstream offerings, is what I'm trying to say. And it's pricey.
So if you drop 400 bucks on it and you're thinking, “Oh, it's going to be a huge compliment-puller, bro. I'm going to get so many compliments,” you probably are going to be let down.
How long does Parfums de Marly Haltane last?
In terms of longevity, 10 hours.
Projection is amazing for the first hour of application.
It didn't even start to sit closer to the skin until about that 7 to 8-hour mark. Incredible longevity and projection.
When to Wear Parfums de Marly Haltane?
In terms of versatility, I think special occasion is really where it's at.
I think the colder weather is really when this fragrance is going to shine the most.
However, if you're wearing it in a climate-controlled environment and you spray conservatively, I think you can also get away with wearing this one indoors, even in an office environment, because, as I said, the sweetness does make it a little bit easier to wear, perhaps for lack of a better phrase.
Although I don't think anything is daring about this, per se. It's not like a Kuhuyan or Acaster.
There are some darker fragrances from the brand. This one doesn't come anywhere near those.
Perfectly unisex, in my opinion, although some people, because of the woodsy base and the agarwood, will say it leans masculine. I can understand that.
In summary – Parfums de Marly Haltane
My final verdict on this fragrance is I love it.
I think it's a solid release from the brand.
It employs and utilizes a unique sweetness about it.
And Kalan kind of did that too with the blood orange and the cinnamon, and it kind of has this dark yet sweet personality.
And this is kind of along those lines, but it's still different. It utilizes different ingredients to achieve a similar olfactive effect, but it's a totally different fragrance.
At the end of the day, I'm impressed, and super stoked to have this. I'm gonna wear it again and again.
