As the days get darker and darker, and it is raining, and windy, and cold, one needs something to warm up, indulge, and smile. Akro Fragrances’ perfume “Bake” is perfect for that purpose. The homely scent of a freshly baked lemon tart, still warm from the oven, is bottled in that perfume.
The lemon in “Bake” is caramelized or cooked in sugar water for such a long period of time until it has lost its sour taste. There is only a slightly tingling hint of lemon left. Candied lemon peel is also a scent note that comes extremely close to what one can smell. Lemon made sweet is one of the most delicious scents possible. In the perfume “Bake” we can indeed imagine the smell of freshly baked cookies or cake dough. The fragrance is not overly refined, the perfumes does not really change much and there are not too many notes in it. One gets exactly what was hoped for – a lemon tart not made to eat, but to wear; a pleasure to indulge in. Unfortunately, the durability of the perfume is not as long as I hoped for, at least not on my skin or garments.
The scent notes according to Akro Fragrances’ website are lemon peel, Chantilly cream, praline, brown sugar, and vanilla.
The sweet cream I cannot smell, and also not the usually distinctive milky, buttery scent it leaves in perfumes. Same for the praline. Cake dough, heavily infused with candied lemon peel or caramelized lemon is what I smell. It is a wonderful happy-go-lucky scent. At least for me, though, only for too short a time.
The colour of the perfume is a creamy yellow.
Master perfumer Olivier Cresp, the nose behind Akro Fragrances, has had a long and distinguished career before he founded his own company in 2018. He was born in 1955 and worked for long years for leading perfume giant Firmenich (today DSM-Firmenich). He was responsible for creating famous perfumes like e.g. Mugler’s “Angel”, various YSL “Black Opium” editions and a lot of the Nina Ricci perfumes. Born in Grasse in a family of perfumers, Olivier Cresp chose the perfect career path. It is good to see that his name is linked to many perfumes. It must be sad for any perfumer not to have his/her name mentioned for the creations one was responsible for. As Olivier Cresp’s skills have not diminished with age, the creation and foundation of Akro Fragrances was just the thing for him. The brand is a real niche brand; only since the last few years it became more known and reached European countries like e.g. Germany.
The company Akro Fragrances is a family business – Olivier Cresp leads it together with his daughter Anais. On their website, the father-daughter-team explains their marketing idea behind Akro Fragrances. Through perfumes with high quality ingredients, they want to capture certain human addictions. The names of the perfumes are therefore short and grippy, too the point: “Bake”, “Glow”, “Dark” and so on.
„Bake“ represents the lemon cupcake that’s smell one cannot resist. Indeed, the scent is often more captivating than the pleasure resulting from eating the cupcake or any other freshly made sweet treat. In “Bake” they realized their vision very well.
Akro Fragrances’ perfumes are solidly made, although not always on the creative level of some other brands when it comes to the complexity of the scents, in my personal opinion. On the other hand, the perfumes come at an acceptable price, sensibly removed from those houses who deem 300 € for 50 ml the new normal.
The London based brand does aim for a trendy, young image – look for yourself, if you are interested, there is an image film on their website. Quite an exceptional feature is their collaboration with artists in other fields than perfumery. Sometimes these artists are young and disruptive, sometimes established. The overall idea to combine scent with other sensory impressions is lovely and certainly has a lot of creative and commercial potential for Akro Fragrances.