Sava

Dior Sauvage made its name on a bright bergamot and Sichuan pepper opening riding over a lavender heart and an ambroxan-driven base that gives it a distinctive, almost ozonic clean-musk finish with famously strong projection. Sava, inspired by it, gets the fresh citrus-pepper opening close, and the lavender-nutmeg-geranium heart is a fair, spicier take on the original's herbal core. Where it departs is the base: instead of Dior's synthetic ambroxan sparkle, Sava settles into a more traditional patchouli-vetiver-amberwood finish that reads warmer and earthier, losing the futuristic, almost mineral clean-skin quality that defines the designer version. Performance is decent for a dupe but noticeably shorter and softer than Sauvage's famous all-day sillage. A solid fresh-spicy signature in its own right, just a different, more old-school kind of woody than the original.