Reviews of John Varvatos (2004)
by John Varvatos

In my opinion, this is a waste of potentially great ingredients. Corrections and additions to fragrance notes -- medjool date fruit (not separate ingredients), mediterranean herbs are lavender, myrtle and rosemary, Indian ajowan is a herb reportedly giving thyme and oregano notes, only one vanilla as a CO2 extract, the balsams are combined with myrrh and benzoin, eaglewood may be something like oud, auramber is likely a synthetic note. So as we see, potentially a great green herbal-spice brew. (all of this from the excellent JV website)
Instead, this essentially is a cloying, ambery-vanilla stew, with headache-inducing qualitites. The top and mid notes are pretty good, though very brief. The greens are fresh and interesting, and the wood/incense is appealing. Then the dreaded heavies and sweeties kick in, and it’s scrubbin’ time! The drydown has an unpleasant note I often find with very synthetic ambers, it is a kind of detergent/amber combination that is extremely irritating.

Meh, it smells of fruity syrup to begin with, then dries down to a creamy vanilla. I was very surprised by how heavy this one is. It reminds me of the women's CK Euphoria, which is also too sweet. Perhaps a good clubbing scent, but I wouldn't wear it for much else.

Reminds me strongly of Armani Black Code. one that is just okay. Unfortunately JV doesn't improve on that concept the least. Instead I perceive it as quite synthetic and slightly cloying. Apart from a GREAT flacon, this was a letdown.

John Varvatos is a fragrance that really ‘grinds my gears’. I went through the employee training for this fragrance, and I’ve mingled with countless reps for this fragrance, and this fragrance is all marketing. It’s a basic sweet leather fragrance with a fruit accord (They say date). They say this is the first fragrance to use Agarwood, which isn’t true, and I would also like to point out that there is nothing that smells even remotely like agarwood in JV. It’s sweet, and the leather doesn’t really make its presence known, but the entire scent wears pretty close to the skin. Basically, this scent is nothing new or groundbreaking. The packaging is very nice, though. The bottle with the leather band.