Category: Fragrance

Ah, Caesars Man.  You were almost my first online purchase, almost.  Especially at $11 for a big ol’ 4.0 oz bottle.  And in your immediate defense, you don’t sound all that bad, with notes of Lime, Oakmoss, Sandalwood, Amber, and Musk.  Imagine my joy when I spot you at the local TJ Maxx.  $9.99 for the same 4.0 oz bottle!  I’m sold!

And that’s where it all went wrong.

Of course, I can’t be too much of a prick about this, at $2.50 an ounce it’s the cheapest cologne in my wardrobe.  The initial burst is even rather pleasant!  Nice crisp citrus with the edges slightly rounded by the sandalwood base.  And I love sandalwood fragrances.  Give it about 30 minutes though, and you start to see another side.  That citrus note gets a little too sweet, almost rotten, and it starts picking up a new note, which to me smells like fir or mint or pine.  Something in that area.  And then the base vanishes.  So you’re left with rotten oranges and pine (rotten orange pine-sol?), and this will be the state of affairs for the next, oh, 15 hours.  On two sprays.  And I’d really rather not project this stuff, so of course it’s one of the great sillage monsters of my wardrobe.

Or it was, anyway.  I gave the bottle to my Dad as I knew I honestly would never wear the stuff again.  He took it with him on a vacation to Florida.  When he returned a week later, he took his shaving bag and tossed it up on the counter.  About a minute later I started smelling something, and something not particularly good either.  With a lurching suspicion, I approach the bag and the scent grows stronger.  I open the zipper and see a puddle … (More) “Caesars Man: Nuclear Freaking Deathbomb”

One of the great leaders of fragrance (along with fashion and design), Yves Saint Laurent is gone at the age of 71.  He will be missed by the fragrance community.

Wearing Kouros today in honor of the man.… (More) “RIP Yves Saint Laurent”

One of the bigger enablers for a perfume enthusiast is the semi-ghetto establishment known as TJ Maxx.  Unfortunately for me (and my wallet), for the past year I’ve worked next door to one.  Normally it’s a bunch of crap inside, Colors, Wings, Adidas Rehash 7,652.  The usual bargain bin stuff.  But ours gets some more exotic stuff in every now and then, from YSL to Thierry Mugler to some of the more popular Kenneth Cole products (always for women sadly, I’m snapping up the first KC Reaction for Men I see there).

So I wasn’t terribly surprised when they received about six 100mL bottles of Tommy Bahama Set Sail St. Barts (hereafter abbreviated to SSSB).  Having no idea what to expect I whip out the iPhone and get on Basenotes to research it a bit, and I find top notes of citrus, tequila and lime, a midsection of guava nectar and more tequila, and a base of crushed greens, “salty sea spray” accord, palm wood, and musk.  Tequila gets mentioned twice?  I immediately recall my limited experience with Le Boise, a rather obscure perfume from the Ginestet winery of Bordeaux, France.  It was pretty much wine, and at $110 for a 100mL bottle I could pretty much splash cheap wine on my body and get much the same olfactory response (though quite messier).  It was so bad my dad told me “You smell like an alcoholic,” which I am not and thus don’t want to wear it as that would incorrectly portray me. :P

One of the “party fouls” of TJ Maxx is opening up a box and spraying some on you, but I was damned sure not going to buy it blind, even semi-blind.  So I spray a little bit on and go on my way back to work.  … (More) “Tommy Bahama Set Sail St. Barts – Laid Back”

In the fragrance world few scents are as hotly debated as Yves Saint Laurent’s 1981 classic, Kouros. On Basenotes it’s more or less a constant stream of asinine chatter. People repeat what they’ve heard, or take a mindset going in to smelling a cologne before actually trying it. For Kouros, the buzzword is “urinal cakes”. Whoever was…clever enough to come up with this association has skewed a lot of people’s opinions.

See, I look at the list of notes and I don’t see urinal cake anywhere. Eucalyptus, laurel, bergamot, artemisia, castoreum, clove, carnation, cinnamon, geranium, jasmine, incense, patchouli, amber, civet, oakmoss, vetiver, leather, and musk. Hmm, didn’t see urinal cake anywhere. What I suspect is going on is people are getting the eucalyptus note, and one of the animalic notes (castoreum from beavers, civet from the cat of the same name), and it’s combining to trigger that scent memory of urinal cakes. To stop there is to miss one of the greater “powerhouse” fragrances you’ll ever find, though.

It’s somewhere between clean and dirty, classy yet extremely sexual. Acclaimed NYT fragrance writer Chandler Burr and I don’t agree on much, and Kouros is no exception. He calls it “is as wearable in the 21st century as 19th-century spats,” which is fine considering he was putting it up against Musc Ravageur and Rose Poivree, scents that are three to four times more expensive. I’m not sure what Mr. Burr is expecting out of it, if you’re wearing it during high noon in an August heat wave it will rise up and kill you. The circumstances to wear a fragrance are as important as the juice itself, and this screams evening wear, for low to moderate temperatures.

What we’re coming to, with the 80s powerhouses like Drakkar Noir and Azzaro Pour … (More) “YSL Kouros – Handle With Care”

A sad truth in the fragrance world is that the public, by and large, has awful taste. Mainstream garbage like Acqua di Gio is regurgitated endlessly by the media, the marketing teams, and the public itself. A fellow Basenoter once commented on the fact that he was once locked in a meeting with 10 Indian men; 6 of the 10 were wearing AdG. Nothing against Indians either way, I do find the demographics to be very interesting on this stuff (maybe the subject of a future post). What I’m getting at, eventually, is while AdG will probably be selling well into my twilight years, you can not find Aramis Havana in any retail store. Not in North America anyway, if you want it you’ll have to do a bit of traveling, to South Africa or one of the other handful of countries that still receive it. Or, you can pay a premium on eBay or one of the fragrance retail websites, upwards of $80 an ounce on average, which is higher than many niche label fragrances.

So when I was posed the offer to buy about 1.5 oz of the stuff for $55, I couldn’t really pass it up. Thank God I didn’t. Part of the reason I was initially interested in the stuff is it had a lot of notes I liked by themselves. Then again, it has a ton of notes, the most I’ve encountered in a fragrance. Havana features top notes of Coriander Seed, Anise, Birch Tar, Juniper Berry, Tangerine, Grapefruit, and Orange, middle notes of Bay Rum, Cumin, Jamaican Pimento Berry, Pepper, Jasmine, and Hyacinth, and all of that is sitting on a prominent woody base of Tobacco, Patchouli, Cedarwood, Myrhh, Labdanum, Oilbanum, Tonka bean, Vanilla, and some other assorted exotic ouds. So there’ll be pretty … (More) “Aramis Havana – The Legend & The Tragedy”

My initial review of Dunhill Pursuit reads something like so:

This stuff is great. I got a spray on paper yesterday at Sephora and decided to leave with a 1mL sample spray of the stuff. Wore three sprays, one to the neck, one to the belly, one to the back of the wrist. The four notes that are standing out the most to me are lemon, incense, sandalwood and vetiver. A quick look at the directory confirms three of the four notes are indeed there, and the vetiver note I’m getting could be something else. Initially it’s a bright, orange and sandalwood-laden scent that’s a little too fresh for me. When it dries down, though, you get the most wonderful incense note, deep and smoky, sweet without being cloying. This interacts with the lush sandalwood wonderfully and you get what I find to be a unique incense. Combined with heat from the body you get a marvelous drydown, one of my favorites to date.

Sillage is fair to good, I did get a comment on it at work today. Longevity is good so far as I’m seven and a half hours into wearing it and most of the magic is still there.

What it reminds me of, and the SA agreed, was Terre d’Hermes, only a little stronger, deeper and maybe a bit sweeter in different ways. Where TdH has a note that conjures up images of a mouth-puckering sour lemon, Dunhill Pursuit offers oranges at an incense-smelling church. I like it, I like it more than TdH honestly.

This was the first Dunhill fragrance I’ve tried and I’m impressed thus far.

Now, since then I’ve bought a bottle and given it some more wears.  What I’m encountering is that the incense note that I initially really went for … (More) “Dunhill Pursuit Revisited”

I have a confession to make. I like women’s perfume. Well, just one. Dolce & Gabanna Light Blue Pour Femme. Of course, they also make a Pour Homme version, but it’s a bunch of crap. The women’s version is definitely unisex, damn whatever their marketing department says.

I was considering buying it. That is, buy a women’s perfume for myself. Thanks to Versace Man Eau Fraiche I won’t have to because it’s the same stuff in a different bottle.

Why am I finding myself commenting on blatant rips as of late? That aside, the stuff really is good as a fresh scent, which I’m normally bored to tears over. It’s clean, slightly fruity with melon, citrus, and berry notes throughout, set on a base of amber and musk. I’d almost say there’s some light woods in there, but if there are it’s not a main part of the composition. That said, those top notes are present throughout, even when you’d rather they go away.

Sillage is good, longevity is fair to good, I get about the standard 6 hours and then it’s faded to something pretty much unrecognizable. Still, if fresh scents are your thing and you want one that’s…*cough* unique, check this one out.… (More) “Versace Man Eau Fraiche”

Let me say before I go any further that I remain steadfastly neutral with regards to celebrity perfumes. I think equating a complex fragrance with many ingredients to one particular person is pretty much dumb. I own Sean John Unforgivable on the merits of it being an excellent fragrance, and honestly don’t give a damn if it was made for Sean Combs or Sean Connery.

Gratuitously lifting the notes from K over at Now Smell This, Usher He features pineapple, verbena, melon, white pepper, lavender, violet leaf, vetiver, amber wood, black suede, sandalwood, guaiac wood and musk. Upon applying, all I could smell was slightly overripe melon a la Paris Hilton for Men. The drydown was a chemical mess, but I got a little glimmer of where they were trying to take this, and that was to copy Creed Himalaya. Of course, I’m not against this; Unforgivable is virtually identical to Creed Millesime Imperial and I have no problem wearing it (and saving mad bank, to boot). The problem is that they didn’t put the effort into the copy that Sean John did. I get the pepper, and the vetiver/musk duo, but that’s really all that I can pick out, everything else is just a blob of scent.

Color me unimpressed.… (More) “Usher He: *vomit*”