Hasta Siempre, Comandante!

“Hasta Siempre, Comandante” is a 1965 song by Cuban composer Carlos Puebla. The song’s lyrics are a reply to revolutionary Che Guevara’s farewell letter when he left Cuba, in order to foster revolution in the Congo and later Bolivia, where he was captured and killed. The song is a revolutionary manifesto reminding us of the bravery of Che Guevara. The song gain it’s fame after Che Guevara’s death. Somehow, Xerjoff’s Comandante from the Join The Club line reminded me of the song and made me realise the complexity of this fragrance, that goes beyond just a nice scent.

Xerjoff’s Comandante conveys power to the wearer and inspires others. It is a manifesto for wearing a good fragrance to define one’s personality. It gives strength and boldness. It gives a boost of confidence on a cloudy day. And as the first two lyrics of the song mentioned above say “We learned to love you/from the historical heights”, if at first you don’t like Comandante, it is sure that you will learn to love it.

This was not my case, I actually loved it at the first sniff.

Comandante belongs to my Black Friday huge capture. It was a blind buy, of a great offer from my dear Obsentum. I wasn’t planning another buy, but I saw this one at a great offer and I could not resit. It was a total blind buy, because I haven’t tried it before, or if I did, I didn’t remember it, but the notes listed and the reviews watched convinced me it would be a great addition to my collection. And it was a bargain, because I ended up paying about 80 euro for the 50 ml version (it had a huge discount and I added some fidelity points from previous spendings).

At the first spray, I was seduced, because the fragrance is an explosion of notes, majestically blended, that develop one by one on the skin, as it dries down. Although the notes are listed linear, the fragrance is not linear at all, and you can actually feel every not as it develops and integrates consecutively, from first to last.

The notes listed in order are Fruity Notes, Floral Notes, Tobacco, Honey, Vanilla, Cedar, Patchouli, Spicy Notes, Leather and you can feel each of them in the right proportion, all and none standing out more.

Comandante is a strong scent, maybe a bit difficult to wear for most of people, not overwhelming, not nauseating, a bit manly, but not exclusively. It is very different from what I own and what I have tried. I definitely recommended it for a mature person, a connaiseur of fragrances. As I said in my unboxing video, it is a formal fragrance, suited for formal events, for business negotiations, for serious characters. It has something from every category: a bit sweet, a bit gourmand, a bit smokey, a bit woody…

Comandante is a gem, like every other Xerjoff fragrance, and every perfume lover should own at least one Xerjoff to feel complete.