Oud Immortel - 492

No. 492 opens with a bright, almost fizzy blast of limoncello and smoky incense, touched with cardamom spice - a fair echo of the original's unusual citrus-and-smoke hook, though it reads sharper and more synthetic straight out of the bottle. The heart brings dark patchouli, papyrus and rosewood, but where the Byredo version builds a genuinely layered, resinous core, this version stays comparatively flat and one-dimensional. The base settles into oakmoss, tobacco leaf and a modest oud facet - present but noticeably lighter and less tenacious than the real thing. Performance is the biggest gap: projection is loud for the first hour or two then collapses to a skin scent, where the original keeps unfolding for most of a day. Still, as a cheap way to sample the general woody-chypre-oud territory of Oud Immortel without the designer price tag, it does the job for a few hours.