Versailles pour Homme (1980)
by Jean Desprez

Edited review :
Lush and very dense with a set of balls that would make Antaeus cringe.

Even the bottle has an elegance mingled with testosterone. This is a heavy hitter from days gone by and NOTHING, I repeat NOTHING smells like Versailles Pour Homme.

Pimento is what I believe is off-putting to those who can't stand this fragrance. It's a love it or basically hate it scent. I am in the love it camp. This fragrance truly is NOT for males of the younger persuasion. It's rare I pidgeon-hole a scent into an age group, but I'd be remiss if I led members to believe that the modern era could pull this one off.

Versailles PH needs to be sampled......and you will either really like it....or you will not.

Aside from a crisp, bergamot opening, there's nothing else I get out of this that I like. The drydown reminds me of a stale bottle of Stetson. Versailles is a floriental with a bitter drydown that smells old. Yes I'm using a subjective term so let me define it. Old as in stale and expired. It just sits there on the skin and doesn't develop into anything other than a bitter resinous accord with too many base notes.

Hate to compare it to something I can only remember but it smells like the backstage of my university's auditorium where the practice rooms were. Needless to say, I never wanted to practice there ever.

Urrrggh! This ‘80s creation is way too much for me. It belongs to a previous generation that I was never a part of and am, therefore, not able to appreciate its ‘qualities’. Don’t ask me about notes because I was more concerned about scrubbing this stuff off my skin. If you like and appreciate, say, Quorum then this may appeal to you. However, chances are, you were old enough to wear fragrances when both of these were at the peak of their popularity.

I’m probably just too young to understand…

[Original submission date: 01 July 2008]

This truly is a scent who's time has come and gone. To wear it now in this modern day and age makes no sense or the thought of resurrecting it on the sales shelf again would be like man going back to writing in hieroglyphics.

Let it rest in peace -

This was the lecture that the Baron de Charlus delivered to the Society of Perfumes in Paris concerning Versailles Pour Homme: "Messieurs and mesdames, this is not so much a rare and discontinued gem, more a case of the Emperor wearing no clothes. It is sad that I, such a kindly man, should find myself forced to prick the bubble of misguided rapture which so many souls have been deluded into adopting towards this fragrance.
There is about Versailles Pour Homme a certain off-note, a sort of vegetal distemper, possibly belonging to the dusty kitchen garden dreams of pimento or capsicum, that renders it utterly unsuited for more than a median ranking in the realms of fine, spicy gentleman's colognes. Why, in this regard it is surpassed by so many other scents, including the much-maligned Quorum and even, quite possibly, by the brown ruminations of Marbert Man (with which Versailles Pour Homme shares definite affinities).
You may choose to think that my judgement merely reflects the subjective waywardness of a fractious dilettante. I assure you it does not. What I have just told you is an objective truth about perfumery!"
The Baron's address so astonished and angered his audience that he was obliged to hurriedly leave the building under a police escort.

You Have Got To Be Kidding! They discontinued this? And I thought the think tank at Aramis was comprised of total twits for discontinuing Havana.

Damn! I don't even own a full bottle.

Well, it's all been corroborated by independant witnesses, judge. It's sophisticated, warm, elegant, sexy and distinctive. I rest my case.

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These are the notes:

Top--bergamot and clary sage oils, green note, lemon, pimento.

Middle-carnation, cedarwood oil, cinammon, fruit notes, geranium, jasmine, patchouli, pine needle, sandalwood.

Base--amber, labdanum, leather, moss, musk, oilbanum, styrax, vanilla.

Now, there are survivors of the 80's--but why kill this masterpiece yet keep alive pedestrian ones?

Well, my guess is that, as in the case of the defunct Jean Patou PH, most acqua-androgynous wearing teens would--if they ever got a chance to smell it, dub it an 'old man's cologne'

*sigh*

Now let's see, would I rather drive a modern Sports Utility (contradiction in terms!) Vehicle or an old man's Phantom V Rolls Royce?

Boy, now there's a tough choice. . .