This is a new line of contemporary fragrances by UK perfumer and tattoo artist Freddie Albrighton. The inspiration is memories and nostalgia... teenage romance, love and loss, family, adventure, life. Each perfume is deeply personal and relatable; a dreamscape of colour and texture, wearing on your skin like hazy, distant memories.
BOYS is a unisex floral, woody musk fragrance that was launched in 2021. It is playful and camp, naive but “now grown up”. It opens with a candied fizz of caramel-like strawberry, raspberry sherbet, cream soda and Parma violet dust. The fragrance is built around a violet accord, mixed with a little lipstick-like rose but cut right through the middle is a bitter, slightly smoked black leather and the vinyl-like aroma of latex (for just that little rebellious streak). A ton of 90’s-style white musks soften the entire perfume and keep the leather in check. A carefree throwback to teenage years, romance, and memories of “the night before”.
BOYS features notes of strawberry, raspberry, violet, rose, leather, white musk and milk. It is an eau de parfum, edp.
Freddie Albrighton BOYS Reviews
Colognoisseur: Boys is a milky gourmand. In the earliest stages it proceeds straightforwardly. Some sweet berries form a smoothie with creamy milk. Mr. Albrighton adds a candied effect through his use of violet to add a second vector of sweetness with the berries. What I’ve been looking for is a fragrance which will push back against this with panache. That is what happens as the twin tones of leather and latex sandwich the gourmand accord. As I wore this it went back and forth between the scent of shiny rubber latex mutating into a classic biker leather accord. Over time the gourmand accord finds a fantastically weird balance with the rough trade accords. It ends on a suite of white musks lifting it all up.
The Sniff.com: BOYS conjures up seedy nightclubs, alcopops and debauchery. It doesn’t go down the civet/animalic route to achieve that, but you do get a real sense of carefree fun, slightly sticky, slightly sweaty, slightly regretful. It opens with a blast of something fruity and boozy which only lasts for a moment before re-emerging later. It wasn’t particularly identifiable as raspberry, more like some sort of soda pop: sugary, sweet and a little synthetic – like a pre-mixed cocktail. This quickly gives way to a leathery violet and much of the space of the scent is taken up in the cross between Parma violets and a luscious leather. There’s a powdery aspect which, for a while, is flecked with hints of smoke – not too much, just enough to suggest the breath of a cigarette on someone’s lips. The interplay between the dusty Parma violet powder, and the smoother leather provides a point of interest, the two facets seeming to slide over each other with one being in charge one minute and the other the next. There’s a bitterness there too, suggestive of the latex accord perhaps? As it wears, Boys goes a little greener and there is almost this suggestion of some sort of foliage, before the fruity, sticky, sweet aspect re-emerges and takes us to the end of the wear. On the blotter a creamy facet came out more, but on my skin this was much quieter. The fruitiness overlaying the leather takes us through to the end of a wear, and it almost feels like a cocktail spilled on a new nightclub banquette. BOYS is huge and its longevity is great too, easily lasting all day and then some. A fragrance you could definitely take with you when you wanted to get up to some mischief and it would still be there in the morning!
Fragrantica: This is good stuff, with a complexity I didn't anticipate. The dramatic opening slowly develops into a lasting powdery fragrance that smells great on men.
