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Rostikspin – :
smoke, burnt asphalt, vanilla in top then incense smoke, dry and amber vanilla in middle like Bulgari Black or Midnight in Paris but stronger and richer
rgkgpduobp – :
Violet ganache ,vanilla butter cupcake
Pentachords white is a powdery , dense floral woody musk , which the main focus on violets and Iris and musk, some redwood and amber. Highly enjoyable and in my opinion very natural feeling. Like Christianne1 already mentioned , 98 % of all perfumes on the market are synthetic , the fact Andy announces the penchathords to be synthetic is throwing people off , judging PW to be chemical. Well it’s not at all the case , I am a lover of Iris and violets and it smells no more synthetic than Hiris or MISIA or Après L’Ondee.
The violets and Iris mixed with vanilla amber and rosewood makes this fragrance slightly palydoish indeed , which for some might be not natural , I however adore that smell , even if it may resemble a vanilla scented plastic doll head ,,,,
Give this fragrance a chance to settle down , after half an hour it becomes very powdery soft but dense vanilla with a hint of Iris and violets. It gets better and better as it becomes one with your skin. It becomes almost metallic and becomes white rather than purple. It’s certainly a minimalistic perfume and is great for every day use.
A perfect Violet gnache vanilla butter cupcake !
amigo93 – :
A fluffy Sugar Spun Violet cloud! Perfect confectionary violet, yum! It is quite gormand to my nose. I think i have found the perfect Violet for me! It does have a synthetic metalic note initially upon spraying, but it quickly dissapears leaving the sweetest powdery and syrupy Violet to work its magic on my skin.
Grafon – :
I love it when I expect to not like something but am pleasantly surprised. Pentachord White is so pleasing to my nose! Nothing like what the others are getting who were less than pleased. I love the combination of floral lightness with woodiness. It feels like springtime in the fall. The ambergris is addictive.
I think the fact that he admitted the Pentachords are all synthetic is throwing people a tad. Many of the fragrances we love from other houses are all synthetic. Andy is one of the few who uses a lot of real oils and extracts so it was a departure for him.
Pentachord White for me is delightful. Like most Tauers it needs to settle down and breathe. Give it at least an hour before you make a decision.
world30rus – :
I recieved a sample from a lovely swapper and was so excited to try this out! This is one perfume where Im not quite sure if its one of my favorites or if its gross. I love love love the powdery notes in this, but throughout the day it gets heavy and strange in a way I cant even explain. Sort of chemically or…..something. I was personally looking for something like insolence, but Im guessing I may prefer my violet a bit sweeter. But at any rate, I feel like if you like a non-sweet violet, its worth a try.
glx1 – :
it smells like something metallical light and/or Rust, kind of weird
Edit (14th Sept 2017) After 3+ Years!!! sweet vanilla iris! AND violets! this is quite weird! it’s not metallic, it’s just quite wierdly blended as the vanilla is kind of cloying, and the tingling whiffs between iris and orris, AND the violets stays in the middle. I keep on smelling mineral water somehow as well! after few minutes in, the blend goes glittery and quite bright. From the 3 blends, this one tops them all perfectly! i really liked it and i wish the iris stays like that for long.
Иваныч – :
Pentachord White is like a story, whispered in soft voice to a woman’s ear. A woman with golden honey hair, a woman who wears pearls and silk dresses. A woman who pours a bit of milk in her green tea, who preffers her hot chocolate to be white, creamy and with a vanilla scent, and she never drinks it hot. She just wait for it to form a thin film meant to hide the smoldering heat from inside the cup. That’s how this perfume is: emotion, voice tremble and sweet taste on the lips.
Pentachord White e ca o poveste spusa soptit, cu voce guturala si catifelata, catre urechea unei femei cu parul de culoarea mierii, o femeie care poarta perle si rochii de matase sau brocart, o femeie care isi bea ceaiul cu lapte, o femeie care prefera ca ciocolata calda sa fie alba, cremoasa si cu gust de vanilie, si nu o bea fierbinte, ci cu o usoara pojghita deasupra menita sa ascunda caldura mocnita din interiorul cestii. Asa este acest parfum: emotie, tremur in voce si zambet cu gust dulce pe buze.
LilNi – :
Pentachord White smells of ultimate comfort and safety to me. It stirs some vague memories from the childhood. Mom’s vanilla-scented lip balm? The streets of that far-away northern city where we used to live in the spring time? Watercolors that I had as a kid that smelled so good I would lick the brush instead of washing it?.. Not sure, but I wear this scent when I need to relax, and it works like a charm. It’s a bit of a zen experience, really.
As many other reviewers, I mostly get vanilla in the first few minutes, but as the scent develops the distinct fresh bitterness of violet and iris comes into play to balance the sweetness out. I almost don’t get any amber or woodiness here, but maybe it’s the warm sensation at the very base that underlines the entire smell and ties it together.
I love how simple and yet sophisticated Andy Tauer’s Pentachords are. I got samples for both this and Pentachord Verdant, and each of them is an entire symphony. I don’t get tired of them. I don’t get used to them. They just somehow put me into the present moment and make me feel more alive. Which is more or less what I want my perfume to do.
maidan1981 – :
reminds me of Balenciaga le dix
arhilion – :
49) I now know what it’s like to sniff (good) glue in a plastic bag, but I will not pay for it.
The 3 Pentachords are the worst things i’have tried for a long time.
minimalist composition around 5 notes, 100% synthetic (the quality of the iris and violet here is just monstrous), it’s maybe good as toilet deodoriser.
More than 100€ for 50ml…Fortunately there are brands that offer better things for a quarter of that price.
evgeny1979 – :
Not a very stellar introduction to this line, which I’m told is gorrrrgeous.
Smells just like the air that surrounded me when I would paint my nails with White-Out in middle school. AND the freshly-painted walls of a very small room. With no windows. I had to keep smelling this because I just…couldn’t…understand it. Remind me not to do the same with a can of paint.
Edit: Just read Scorpiosheep’s review and, bang ON.
jema_85 – :
Was a present, some time ago… for April Fools’ Day, I liked it. It smelled of a shop selling things for cars, mostly tyres, and I’ve got a whiff of antifreeze, too. There was also a bit of sweets that sometimes may be found in scents. First the tyres and the antifreeze were louder, but (it took them about eight hours) they grew quieter than the sweets (this phase lasted for about 12 hours on me).
borunov.nick – :
It does seem very synthetic but I don’t mind that. It reminds me of childhood- Parma violets, sherbet, playdoh (as previously mentioned). It’s also very clean, it avoids being too vanillic and cloying by being crisp and fizzy.
Komissar – :
Formula is unstable. Have perfume for a year. Changed color and begins to smell synthetic and disproportionate. Not the same.
octava – :
there is a work done on replacements for bois de rose and not to talk about ambre gris….
is andy really (still) using those materials – maybe a differnet provinience of bois de rose (india…?) – but what about ambre gris….
just thinking & asking
best
E_VERESCHAGINA – :
The opening reveals a blast of bourbon; other than a vague note of synthetic vanilla fading in and out, there seems to be no development on my skin. Not offensive, but certainly not interesting, either.
guile – :
This fragrance is interesting structurally, and as an experiment in perfumery, but I don’t think that experiment needs to be repeated. It’s like John Cage’s music– interesting, but unpleasant to listen to, and doesn’t need to be copied!
I love iris and this perfume does not smell like iris, not in any way whatsoever to me. The perfume has a very synthetic strong metallic note to it that I could actually taste in my mouth as well as smell. This kept me from enjoying the flowers at all even though I could discern them. The effect was of something sharp, nails screeching across a painted metal surface or a fresh needle being opened and filled with lydocaine. Finally it dries down to a funky Tide washing powder fragrance, except that Tide smells better. Not recommended. Was Tauer trying to outdo Lutens Iris Silver Mist with only five ingredients? It didn’t work.
tulynoff – :
Really nice on my skin. Powdery and clean. Even if I have to admit that I smell a lot of violet in it, probably as much as iris, which makes it different and elegant. I absolutely appreciate this scent and I would wear it for sure!
FubSheerb – :
I am beginning to favour Tauer’s original and exquisite creations far above many others. I don’t particularly love iris but would happily purchase a full bottle of this iris/vanilla scent without a qualm. This is a charmingly sweet perfume without a foot through the candy gourmand door. Powdery but not overly so. Warmed by amber and deepened by woods. Opening with a burst of fresh violet flowers before the iris and vanilla dance their way into the composition. Well balanced sweet, powdery and still fresh and natural with close sillage and good longevity. Drydown becomes similar but not identical to Teint De Neige. Tauer has accomplished with five notes what some may fail to achieve even with more ingredients. For me definitely full bottle worthy.
kera195 – :
An exercise in minimalism by Andy Tauer. Originally released exclusively for italian most influential niche shop in Rome called Campomarzio70 and now available in other selected boutiques around the world, the Pentachord line is composed using just 5 five ingredients for each fragrance. What came out is a mini-line of three juices that while surely minimalistic, are still pretty interesting due to their avant-garde facet. I’m actually not crazy about any of them but, at the same time, if you like experimental stuff, they’re well worth checking out.
White is a partially successful iris/vanilla concoction with an interesting twist provided by an extremely dry quality. The vanilla is juxtaposed to wormwood and orris root to create a sweet/salty composition enriched by a candied violet petal note. In this phase, White is powdery yet dry, sweet but not overly so with just a touch of ambergis adding some depth. Do I like it? Well, sort of. In my opinion it feels a tad crude to be full bottle worthy and the party get spolied by a sort of woody-ambery thing the turns the fragrance into a cloying bomb during the late drydown but, it surely deserves some attention if you like vanilla-centered frgrances and are sick and tired of the usual gourmandic take we’re experiencing way too often.
Rating: 6.5-7/10
a.si4ev – :
I find Tauer Perfumes Pentachord WHITE initially similar to a nineteenth-century violet perfume, something along the lines of Borsari VIOLETTA DI PARMA. From there a few different rather odd stages are traversed.
The smell of old musty books in the cold basement of a library is the first, followed by the smell of what seem to be planks of plywood. The plywood then begins to darken, becoming redder and redder until it is redwood.
By the drydown, I smell the Playdoh-ish violet of Christiane Celle CALYPSO VIOLET minglng with the redwood, but mainly it’s Playdoh and violet at this point, with much less woodiness.
Do I like it? Yes, I guess I do, though I don’t know that I need to have a bottle. WHITE seems to me to be an interesting experiment. Not sure that the world was deficient before the creation of a synthetic violet wood perfume which mimics in the opening and the drydown the scent of readily available natural violet perfumes…
NewRussian – :
This. Is. Weird.
I try to recall myself, where I’ve smelled it before. Cause I’ve smelled it for sure: it has something plastic/synthetic inside, like sweet rubber for pencils or good old Byblos. Sweet, plastic, nice but weird as a fragrance. Violets and iris are very subtle and almost unnoticeable, woody vanilla takes the wheel.
It gets very sugary on my skin and ends as a siamese twin for Vanitas by Profvmvm Roma. Sugar with orange blossoms. Don’t ask me, how could they come out there.
mipVoberieVot1 – :
When I was a child, in Hungary, there was a sweet candy, which has this kind of fragrance. I adored that candy, so this memory makes me love this scent 🙂
In YouTube there is a video about Pentachords fragrances, in which Andy Tauer tells a lot of things about these 3 parfume. For example, they are really synthetic, Andy Tauer would like to prove, that a fragrance would be good if only it has five notes and the notes are truly synthetic.
I think sometimes a memory or a feeling can make the fragrance so good…..
The more I wear it, the more I love it!
9/10
killermanleo – :
this is a strange thing concerning structure. it’s not like the classical pyramid, but more like a star, or better: like a ring- or ok! a pentagram- with pulsating edges. sometimes the iris comes out, then again the vanilla is there, then it’s woody etc…. interesting but also makes me nervous. has not at all the calming and “happy-feel” of iris…and take care- stays forever: if you spray it in the morning you will still have your dreams filled with this alien cotton candy…(happened with me with “verdant” which is even stronger)
so, feels quite experimental in behaviour…
edit:
I wouldn’t wear it. too synthetical.
edit 2: it’s not the synthetics that make it unwearable, more the haunting squeaky falsetto, that also makes “vanille insensée” a scrubber for me…no matter if synthetic or natural…I miss the humming baseline!!
garri3 – :
I found this to be soft, sweet and gentle but fairly long-lasting.
It initially put me in mind of Lush’s “V” from long ago, so I tried some to compare the scents.
“V” was deeper and muskier but still powdery and soft, if that makes sense, whereas “Pentachords: White” soared higher, like soft fluffy vanilla-candy clouds.
Charming and innocent and disarmingly adorable; Julie Andrews could’ve put this with her Favourite Things, alongside the “whiskers on kittens” and “warm woollen mittens”!