I’ve had my eye on this one for quite a while now. I think I’d just decided that this fragrance was something I HAD to get because of my love for sweet tobacco scents. I have Spicebomb Extreme to thank for that, and an honourable mention to Tobacco Vanille for accentuating it. After a lot of research online, I decided Herod was definitely something I needed to have in my collection. So many accounts of people claiming this was one of PDM’s best, and genuinely one of the best Tobacco scents out there. I just didn’t know I’d get it this quick.
Source: I’m part of Gur Updesh’s broadcast, and on one fateful evening, I was grocery shopping at a supermarket. Gur’s listing for Herod came in, and I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I fell to my knees. Proper crying in the club scene, except it was wailing in a More Megastore. Ran back home, did some quick consulting on this financial irresponsibility, and sent him a message to book it. Paid a nominal booking amount to secure my bottle and paid the rest shortly after. Gur is well known in the community, and hence I wasn’t too worried about getting it from him (this was our first transaction). He answered any and all questions I had about it during the buying process, and shipped it as soon as he could. The package was a cardboard box with the bottle wrapped in a few layers of perforated paper wrap. It wasn’t overkill, but it got the job done.
Bottle: Parfums de Marly bottles are so gorgeous, and Herod is no exception. I absolutely love the design on these bottles, and they always stood out to me ever since I saw them for the first time. So classic, so timeless and so clean. Herod’s glossy Metallic Grey looks stunning, and grey just happens to be my favourite colour. Maybe it was all meant to be! The bottle is very heavy, relative to any other bottles I own. Even the cap has such a satisfying heft to it. All of this together just oozes quality. My particular bottle is a tester, and has 2-3 spots where the paint is slightly chipped. But honestly that doesn’t bother me at all, I’m just glad I was able to get my hands on it.
Perfume Review: I cannot decide where to start. I honestly don’t know what’s not to like with this scent. The opening is such an amazing mix of Cinnamon and a soft spicy pepper. It doesn’t make this top note “fresh spicy” like Black Pepper or Sichuan Pepper would. It also has a nice fruity accord off the top which gives off a cherry / apple-y kind of vibe. I remember my first reaction smelling this the day I got it, and I had another friend over who is also into fragrances. I sprayed this onto my hand and I genuinely whimpered. I didn’t get that immediate blast of alcohol that all my other fragrances have. This was just pure goddamn quality. The explosion of Tobacco and the cinnamon sweetness, the pullback from the pepper, and the smooth wafts of the fruit acetates was the best thing I’ve (probably ever) put my nose on. As we move into the mid notes, we really start coming across the gorgeous tobacco accord used in this formulation. It’s a medium intensity tobacco that’s brought away from the spicy side because of the Incense, ambery labdanum and the osmanthus, which kind of adds a slight honey-like sweetness to the middle. Absolutely love the fluidic harmony between these notes, a beautiful push and pull of accords. Sliding on down to the base notes, I genuinely just can’t give this one enough praise for what it brings to the table. When you spend a bomb on a fragrance, you kind of have this immediate expectation for it to perform and live up to that cost. Herod was an immediate pay-off. One of the best facets of Parfums de Marly, in my opinion, lies in the quality of raw materials they use in their work. That is no different here. The accords in this formulation are easily the highest quality I’ve come across. For example, the tobacco; it isn’t a weak strain like you would find on more popular fragrances like Le Male Elixir (which I’m wearing right now, and can’t really catch any of the tobacco in here). It, however, also isn’t a harsher, more intense version like you would find in Mancera’s Red Tobacco. It sits smack dab in the middle and I think the balance struck there is the perfect sweet spot. Cinnamon has few forms too, with most designer perfumers using a stronger, spicier version of it, like Cassia. This form of cinnamon tends to be more available commercially, which by extension makes it cheaper, and an easier reach for production. I just think the Cinnamon accords PDM uses are much gentler, sweeter and bring soft waves of it throughout the formulation. Vanilla again, is such a common note in the recent shift to a sweeter style of scents. I love vanilla, it’s one of my most favourite accords in a perfume, so I really do appreciate it when it’s done right. I’ve smelt so much of this widespread version of Vanilla, but I’m always blown away when I catch a whiff of PDMs vanilla. Their blends of high quality Vanillin and Coumarin are to die for, I could point out their version of vanilla in a crowded room. I don’t know how to explain it, but if you’ve smelt PDM, I think you’ll know what I mean. Althair was the scent that really convinced me that PDM does vanilla the way God intended. My stance on this will remain unchanged until I can test Dior’s Vanilla Diorama out. The backbone of Herod’s base revolves around Iso E Super, Woodsy notes and absolutely gorgeous clean, white musks. In a scent that’s as commanding and heavy as Herod, the type of musk being used is key, and they picked well. The musk here really helps build a clean wall of scent around you, and aids LSP. These beautiful notes are also flanked by Cypriol Oil that further enhance the woody nature of the base. The Iso E Super adds that extra layer of ambery sweetness to the formulation, while also boosting performance.
To summarise, Olivier Pescheux is a master at his craft, and I can easily say he’s created one of the best tobacco scents out there. Herod is just modern, beautiful perfumery done so well. The general blend of natural oils and aroma chemicals are, in my opinion, what dictate the quality of a formulation. PDM strikes this balance really well. They always have, which is why they will always smell expensive.The clean musks in this formulation give it such an amazing clean radiance off the skin, and projects strongly initially.
Performance: So like I’ve mentioned countless times already, Herod was always something I wanted to get eventually. For some reason though, I never looked at performance when I made this decision. When the deal showed up with Gur, I was blindsided and bought it without researching on performance. This was a terrible anxiety ridden period because that’s when I started reading general consensus on Herod’s performance, and it looked super worrying. A lot of people went on about how this fragrance dies out in an hour, how it doesn’t project, doesn’t last etc. This was very scary to me. People said it’s been reformulated to hell and it’s barely a shell of its former self. But on the other hand, I also saw multiple people saying it performs just fine on their skin still. It was a gamble, and so I asked Gur for the batch code. This bottle turned out to be a 2021 batch, which gave me a little hope. This information, along with my idealistic bias towards the perfume, pushed me to go ahead with the purchase. I bit the bullet and went through with it.
I’m happy to report that I’m glad I went ahead and got it. Like I mentioned in the ingredient breakdown, the quality of materials used are just that high quality that it makes no sense for it to NOT perform decently. Also given our country and its temperatures, Herod is forced to be a winter night-time only fragrance. If you wear a fragrance under this criteria, you don’t need it to last forever, because you run out of night before you can complain about the scent disappearing off your skin. Herod projects strongly for the first 2ish hours, and builds an absolute wall of fragrance around you. The sillage on this is insanely good. Get a spray of this on the back of your neck and people WILL be turning around. I put this on one night around 9pm and I kid you not, it remained on me till 9am the next morning. Sure, it was a skin scent by then, but I think the real magic of Herod is when it turns into a skin scent. One of the best I’ve smelt, period. So on average, I think this frag should last you a good 6-7 hours in general if you’re doing a lot of activity. But if you’re having a nicer, more relaxed night out, expect this to remain on your skin for a long, long time.
This one’s an easy recommend for people that like Tobacco scents, definitely on the level of (I might even say better!) than Tom Ford’s Tobacco Vanille. Absolutely, undoubtedly a 10/10 in my books.
Please, feel free to ask me any questions if you have them, tell me your own experience with Herod if you’ve gotten a chance to wear it! And most importantly, I genuinely appreciate you if you’ve made it this far and read everything here. I love writing about fragrances right now, it’s so fun. Looking forward to writing more, and sharing more with this community! Have a nice weekend 😀
