Bottega Veneta – Knot

source: thechroniclesofher.com

The bottle of Bottega Veneta‘s Knot is drop dead gorgeous. Unfortunately, that’s the highest praise that I can accord to it, since the juice is, by all accounts, utterly yawn-inducing.

I’ll say this straight up: Knot is almost a carbon copy of Prada‘s Infusion de Fleur d’Oranger, which was released in 2009 and which was created by the same perfumer, Daniela Andrier, according to Basenotes. I say almost, because Knot is inferior to the former release. It wasn’t that Infusion de Fleur d’Oranger was ground-breaking, to begin with, but it played its part as a cheerful, bright and sunny orange blossom fragrance guaranteed to put a smile on anyone’s face. Add to that the fact that the Infusion can be found cheaply at online discounters ($80 for a whopping 13.5oz, if anyone ever needs that much – you could shower in that stuff), whereas Knot, being a recent release, costs $160 in department stores, and you end up with a miserly blogger griping about all the money going into the packaging (which really is beautiful).

But let’s evaluate Knot on its terms. Its opening is pretty, with a clean, non-showy orange blossom/neroli mix undergirded with a teensy bit of lavender that lends it a certain bridal freshness. Now, L’Artisan Perfumeur‘s Séville à l’Aube achieved a similar cologne-like freshness with the use of lavender paired with orange blossom, but to far greater effect, since Knot does so timidly, as though afraid to offend wearers by being too fresh, as it were.

But even this little bit of kindness extended to the fragrance cannot last, since it promptly decided to vanish considerably after approximately the 5 minute mark (I kid you not, I tried it on a few times with different parts of my arm in order to time it), leaving us with hey presto! Laundry! And even that disappears fairly quickly.

All in all, Knot was a major disappointment for me, especially since I tried it after reading a 4-star review of it over on Boisdejasmin, which I have linked here so that you might get a different viewpoint. I would have given the bottle 5 stars and the juice half a star, if any at all. In any case, Knot seems to be the fragrance embodiment of the classic bait and switch scam, enticing one as it were with its very beautiful bottle (I’ll say this over and over again) and pretty top notes, but then switching out to mediocrity soon after.

[Review based on a sample I procured while on a visit to Nordstrom in Providence]

~ The Smelly Vagabond

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