PENHALIGON’S
PORTRAITS – FORTUITOUS FINLEY

2025

salty pistachio
Sandalwood
leather

‘Fresh yet spicy, Finley charms with lucky violet and leather. A majestic mane of maté billows in the breeze. This stallion’s scent is dangerously addictive.’ – Penhaligon’s

While Fortuitous Finley is a well-constructed, somewhat traditional fragrance, it’s not really up my alley. This is for fans of the classic, men’s marketed leathery colognes. And to be blunt; I don’t think it’s a stand-out for that genre or for the Penhaligon’s Portraits either way. Nothing bad, nothing remarkable.

It smells instantly familiar, even though I don’t have a fragrance like this in my own collection. It’s just a style that feels nostalgic and it’s executed here in a mostly traditional way, with some more modern extra sweetness.

It’s mostly leathery from the get-go for me, with slight aromatic tinges, but there is an… aquatic-ish,tinge to it all in my experience.

On my skin, this grows quite peppery, spicy, with a watery, herbal leather backdrop and a hint of sweetness. I wouldn’t say it’s salty, but I guess I can see the saltiness as part of an aquatic/marine vibe if I stretch my imagination. I definitely don’t smell pistachio, or a pronounced violet for that matter.

In the drydown, the leather makes way for more woodiness, combining them in the way a Matiere Premiere Falcon Leather does, but still in a more cologne-ish, semi-fougere way.

All this is done with subtlety and for a leather style scent profile, it’s on the soft and short-lived side, but that isn’t really a negative in my book. At least it’s not overly harsh or screechy, or too sweet. Compared to contemporary Parfums de Marley Castley for example, I think Fortuitous Finley feels a lot more balanced and mature.

Still, it’s quite an uninteresting or even generic release in my book. It wears nicely, but doesnt exude any more quality or class than your average fougere or woody leather, including those found at designer prices or cheaper vintage fragrances; it feels like a baseline product. The most compared fragrance on Fragrantica for example is Dior Fahrenheit and I don’t think that you could go wrong with opting for that over Finley. There’s not that many of these ‘traditionally masculine’ style fragrances being pushed, so that keeps it from being completely lost in the sea of releases, but that’s the most that it has going for it in my opinion.