Completely get that you look for clones! Some of them are really good, for example Club De Nuit Intense is a good Aventus clone and it’s cheap. eBay has like a 200ml bottle for maybe $45! I use that for work as I’m not burning through my actual Aventus for that, although the real stuff will always be more elegant smelling IMO. I wouldn’t honestly ever get tied up with the batch thing - the formulation itself naturally causes you to go ‘nose blind’ quickly and so a lot of people try and go for the older batches but honestly, the older ones lose A LOT of that key pineapple note and you’re paying 2x+ than retail of a new batch. I bit the bullet a while back to get a ‘16 batch (the one at the top left) and although it’s nice, I rarely wear it because the f’ing thing was twice as much as my ‘21 batch (top right). Closing out my Aventus rant, I highly suggest you grab a sample size/decant of Aventus Cologne (it’s NOT Aventus). It much more fresh and mass-appealing, where the key note is mandarine instead of Aventus being pineapple, but it lasts a lot longer for me and smells way better (the wife agrees). I have a 50ml (top middle grey one) and a 250ml flacon of the stuff because I like it so much.
I kind of shifted from heavy lifting from around 2014-2019 to having a growing passion for collecting fragrances lol, so I went from spending a **** ton on supps/PH’s to fragrances! I always have to have something to look forward to.
I’ve never grabbed legit GIT but do have a clone and the clone isn’t bad! I bet the original would be fire.
As for PDM, I kind of went ham (surprise) and got those 3 all at once, so out of the 3 I own (Herod (left), Layton Exclusif (middle) and Carlisle (right)) I’d have to give it to Carlisle. BUT, it depends on the weather as Carlisle is 10000% a cold weather frag because it’s extremely potent. Super masculine and lasts for 12+ hrs on skin. Layton Exclusif would have to be my next favorite of the 3 and being the Exclusif, it has notes from Layton and Pegasus. This holds true with the other Exclusif iterations, where they have notes from their other frags that makes them unique.
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I never got into YSL, simply due to me being on the niche train for so long! Like I mentioned, my most recent purchase was that Chanel BDC Parfum which is obviously a designer frag but it’s damn good.