Dzing! by L'Artisan Parfumeur, 1999

I read that Luca Turin called l'Eau du Navigateur (1982) dated. He'd know better than I. I never smelled before 2013. Still, there is a distinction between dated, meaning era-specific, and tired, even if 'dated' has a negative connotation. Navigateur might be dated today, 32 years after its release, but it's held up well. To be innovative in 1982 and still smell good in 2013? Sounds successful.

As a point of comparison Pink Sugar is both era-specific and tired, and was hardly innovative at the time of its release. There are worse things than dated. Does this make Navigateur the male equivalent of old lady perfume? I can live with that.

I understand the classifications of the era: loud, spicy, woody as in Antaeus/Quorum/Krizia Uomo; basso fougere like Drakkar Noir and Azzaro pour Homme. I don't see Navigateur as just a crude precursor of more refined hybrids from the more discriminating 1990s. Rather, the ship landed on the shores of a new  "oriental" with coffee in lieu of vanilla.  One that  predated the Serge Lutens new woody "oriental" from later in the decade.   Coffee bridges culinary spice to resin via woodiness, just as vanilla does. And while Navigateur might also have heralded the gourmand era, its focus is the roasted coffee bean. No cotton candy, no frappuccino. 

We twist ourselves into knots to imagine that without oakmoss and coumarin the chypre and the fougere are still alive; witness the original Miss Dior Cherie, already redacted by Dior, and Penhaligon's Sartorial. If we want to view perfumery historically, I vote for acknowledging and embracing the extant, significant perfumes such as Navigateur. Learn from it and enjoy it while it's here. Who knows when the IFRA will limit coffee use? from scent hurdle.com

I was ready to be offended in a good way. Come at me, elephant droppings! Right over here, boatload of cardboard! What Dzing!(?) delivered? ... a gently droning public restroom ambience rather than much animalic or barnyard, a hint of the primate house at the zoo, sickening saffron and ginger, then on to cheap leather, second-day vanilla cigar smoke, and wet pizza box. That might work for an aromarama double feature engagement of Monkey Business and Slacker, but why pay time, money, and skin space for the joke? If this sort of thing excites you or shows up differently on your skin, maybe you'll like it. To me: this is really an incredibly stupid perfume, and I hate it. Twice as gimmicky as Secretions Magnifiques, but both suffer from sophomore album syndrome: the "hey this is going to be shocking, wait, watch," then delivering the most economically squeezed out, near-cynical recreation of its seemingly hyperbolic or hinting-at-something-more backstory. This doesn't smell like old books to me either, and I spend over half of my life around old books. Want to smell like old books? Buy a bunch from your local secondhand bookstore and rub them on yourself, smoke a pipe, or wear a leather perfume with cooking vanilla on top. Want a weird and exhilaratingly revolting fragrance? Angel. After repeat sniffs and wears I wonder if Dzing! is an Emperor without clothes for the smelly set or if, more likely, I just don't care to get it.