Having completed a recent move, I am slowly coming back to the smell game and starting off with Givenchy Pi, a men’s fragrance toting itself as a woody oriental.
Pi
In Bottle: Mandarin with a vanilla and herbal scent up top. A pleasant if somewhat strange combination.
Applied: Mandarin right away with a nice wave of herbs coming in soon after it. I smell the rosemary rather predominantly. Almost as fast as the opening rolls in, I get a big whiff of almonds and vanilla and the fragrance sweetens up almost immediately. It’s kind of a shame that almond and vanilla and generally considered feminine fragrances because if given enough of a chance, Pi could make anyone of any gender smell good. It’s certainly a bit of a change from what I usually see with men’s scents. I rather like that it started off typical enough then takes itself into a sweet vanilla direction. The fragrance wears on with sweet vanilla and almond until the woodsiness comes up and mingles with the vanilla. The end product is a rather pleasant vanilla woods.
Extra: Pi was released in 1999 and has since split into a few flankers. You can still easily find Pi at department stores and even some drug stores.
Design: Serge Mansau strikes again with this bottle design. It reminds me a bit of Ancient Egyptian architecture with its even, straight form and coloring. The bottle is rather hefty, a little difficult to hold, but it is otherwise a beautiful, interesting piece to have.
Fragrance Family: Woodsy Oriental
Notes: Mandarin, tarragon, basil, rosemary, tonka, vanilla, benzoin, almond, brown sugar, cedar.
Pi is like a fragrance exploring the three concepts of fragrance gendering. It starts off masculine, evolves a bit into the feminine, then ends on a rather unisex note.
Reviewed in This Post: Pi, 2010, Eau de Toilette.