Dirty English (2008)
by Juicy Couture

Sometime world...

I met a man who felt the same way
That the world had passed him by...

He's riding a Norton Commando 850.
It probably belonged to his father.
He has a stubble and his hair is greasy. Either because of brillantine or because it's been three days since he last went home.
He's wearing a black double rider leather jacket, which surely has seen better days, and dusted black tight jeans and boots.
His weary eyes are hidden behind a pair of vintage American Optical Pilots.
They probably belonged to his father too.
He's leaning on his bike on the promenade, with a hip flask in his hands and a cigarillo hanging from his lips.
He reeks of motor oil and vintage Mickeyrourkeism.
He looks as tough as old boots and equally worn.
He's not looking for trouble, but trouble is definitely looking for him.
His slight whiff of sulphur and phosphorus, makes the Devil smile in his sleep.
He has just bought a fragrance, to spare him the talking.
Which one do you think it is?...

27^th February, 2015

Found this for $25 at a fragrance kiosk at my local shopping hell (mall). While I normally don't bargain hunt outlet stores for fragrances, I had heard good things about Dirty English and like their marketing package, so when I saw it at a discount, I thought I would gamble with the small amount. I agree with other posters that this scent is hard to nail down, especially to any single note. Other than the bergamot/mandarin top notes the rest is kind of a bourbon wood, mossy, leather concert of scent. I have to admit it has a great dry sweetness to it, just as reviews stated.

I"ll wear Dirty English out to dinner on weekends and agree that it would benefit from increased strength of projection and longevity, but I can smell it faintly for about 3 hrs. A nice scent, and a great kitzschy bottle. Don't pay over $30 for this and you'll be happy too.

7.5/10

13^th February, 2015 (Last Edited: 19^th February, 2015)

Another could-be gem ruined by poor longevity and weak performance overall. The concoction of citrus-spices-booziness-leather is great and markedly distinguished from the many other soulless specimens that line the shelves of mens fragrances at stores. Subsides into a faint pleasant skin scent about 4 hours after application.

A must try, particularly if one is okay with no-so-great performance. Doesn't cost a fortune either, so generous applications are not that expensive.

Pros: Uniqueness, well-done fragrance
Cons: Longevity, Projection (particularly longevity)

29^th November, 2014

Genre: Leather

By way of a prologue: The cashier at the local pharmacy refused to wait on me while I was testing this. She winced, made gagging faces, wailed “I can’t take that perfume!” and waved me over to another counter. I was wearing one(!) spray of Dirty English on my left wrist.

Me, I don’t think it’s all that bad. (Though it’s perhaps deceptively loud.) Once past its rather jumbled array of citrus and spice top notes, Dirty English resolves into a boozy, animalic leather set alongside a dry, scratchy, spiced conifer wood accord. To my nose, these two fragrance blocks do not blend, but rather run their separate courses in tandem. There are moments in the music of Charles Ives where the orchestra plays two different tunes in two unrelated keys at once, at the same volume, and that’s what the heart of Dirty English smells like to me. In music or in fragrance, it’s a clever trick, one played successfully with different materials in scents as diverse as Angel (fruity floral and patchouli oriental), Baldessarini (spiced fruit and dry cedar), and Aramis 900 (amber oriental and aromatic green chypre).

The first key to success in this maneuver is balance. The two opposing fragrance blocks must be of nearly identical weight in order to maintain tension. This kind of balance is relatively easy to achieve for brief intervals, but to make it endure for any length of time is an act of great art. The second key is distance: the two blocks must be distinct enough to contrast with one another, yet share just enough in character to relate in some manner. Otherwise, the result is more of an olfactory stunt than a fragrance. (Smell Annick Goutal’s Eau du Fier or Etat Libre d’Orange’s Vierges & Toreros to see what I mean.) Dirty English succeeds admirably in terms of balance, but I’m not sure that the distance between its boozy leather and its dry cedar blocks is as well judged.

I must admit to some bias here. You see, I find the scent’s animalic leather aspect far more interesting than the crisp woods. Set by itself, I imagine the cedar/cypress/cardamom complex in Dirty English would smell like any one of a thousand cheap, generic masculine scents that clumsily ape Jean-Claude Elléna’s superb Déclaration. Meanwhile, the boozy leather on its own might smell something like Czech & Speake’s Cuba, or maybe a tamer version of Idole de Lubin. To my disappointment, it’s the scratchy woody amber behind the cedar that endures to dominate the drydown, while the leather, booze, and spices peter out after about three or four hours.

Even so, in a fragrance market where the men’s fragrance aisles are crowded by bland, cynical scents distinguishable only by their packaging, the nose, creative director, and marketing team behind Dirty English deserve high praise for producing and promoting something with a real personality and a clever structure. I consider it a step, albeit a slightly faltering one, in the right direction. I hope it works.

12^th June, 2014

Really not sure why this gets so much attention, I'm hardly a niche fragrance snob but this smells really cheap to me, there's a boozy note in there along with some real drugstore budget smelling woods. This is the sort of thing a 16 year old would wear when going on the pull. Longevity is rubbish.

14^th February, 2014

Spicy, woodsy, a little dry, a little dirty, and with some subtle warm sweetness underlying. The package/bottle design makes me think they were trying to convey somewhat of a rock n roll vibe with this. They were pretty accurate, imo. But not in some blazing lead guitarist kind of way. More like a solid rock bassist. Cool, but not flashy.

I love the scent, but the longevity just isn't that great. The projection is also fairly moderate, but that's probably a good thing as any more projection and it would be too cloying. Some may already think this is cloying.

Longevity is somewhat of a pet peeve for me so I give it a neutral rating. Otherwise a thumbs up.

Recommended wear: day, casual. Seasons: fall, (early) spring.

30^th December, 2013