Haitian Vetiver by Ermenegildo Zegna

I don’t find it as hard to review as Prieth did, maybe because I’m not so reserved. 🙂 It felt like a new joke from this so-called luxury perfumery. A perfume over $220 that should cost $50. It’s a classic vetiver opening with a very soft bergamot note, well-executed but offering nothing new or special. The dry down settles into the typical vetiver vibe, in its cleanest and most discreet presentation. That’s the end of the story. Look, it’s not bad. It has some quality, but it didn’t seem to me at all superior to Guerlain’s Vetiver (vintage), which is much more complex, or even Tom Ford’s Grey Vetiver (which fits this line perfectly), available for a fraction of the price (here in Spain, the 100ml bottle of Tom Ford goes for under $90). If you’re a vetiver fan, talking about its cleanest and freshest facet and don’t mind emptying your wallet, well, it could be an option to try, but I don’t see it. Longevity is good (over 8 hours) with a very discreet sillage that I couldn’t make heavy or overpowering even with over-application. The bottle is very solid and the magnetic cap looks frankly great. I love the packaging.

It’s a bit hard for me to review this fragrance since, at first glance, I don’t find it comparable to the style of other vetivers I own. Let’s start with what’s clear. Inside each box of some of the high-end fragrances from this Ermenegildo Zegna line, there’s a small booklet explaining the philosophy of this line called ‘Essenze’. It explains that there’s a leading note, a common thread in all fragrances of this line, which is Italian bergamot. The house Zegna says they’ve secured a single harvest for the coming years. The booklet mentions the same specific notes listed on Fragrantica, plus the bergamot note which is the guiding thread. This fragrance, classified by Fragrantica as aromatic woody, has an undeniable and preponderant vegetal contribution. At the start, you definitely feel a pleasant note of bergamot and neroli, with moderate sillage, evolving towards an iris quite different from Dior Homme’s, as here you perceive the flower, but very subtly; you never smell makeup or anything similar. Then comes a somewhat strange but not unpleasant vegetal sensation, which must be the carrot seeds, and finally the earthy vetiver note appears, which would be the only wood you’ll find here. For me, the fragrance is simply aromatic. It’s an elegant vetiver that reminds me most of Prada’s Infusion d’Iris Vetiver for Men (2010), but without the slightly synthetic sensation that Prada left me with. Its definition would be very well balanced, with notes of quality that give a tremendous sense of cleanliness and neatness. This fragrance is for daytime use, for something formal, with a white shirt, for summer or spring. Its longevity on me is over 12 hours; being generous with application creates a sillage, perhaps heavy for the first two hours, dropping quickly to moderate for most of the time and then to skin scent at the end. It’s a good clean and neat vetiver, at a price somewhat disadvantageous for what others might expect. The bottle, with a magnetic cap and simple but elegant lines, is of great quality, matching the price of this collection.