Opinions on Paradox by Jacomo?

I hate that junk! Ugh, couldn't stand it when I got my bottle. Gives me the willies even thinking about it. No offense intended to the fine members, yourself included, Rebel, who enjoy it enough to wear it and consider it for rotation, but, good friends, Paradox just is not my bag.

I bought it cheap online and blind (no regrets about the purchase or the blindness) because Luca Turin wrote very highly of it. Sounds like something I'd like to smell, I thought, since I'd like to see where I come out when I smell something a scent-thinker finds above worthy. As I recall Turin had highest praises for Paradox for women, but said the men's companion was also of very high grade. I bought Paradox Pour Homme, and can't comment on the bottle for women--maybe it will rock my world, who's to know?

Anyway, it smells of cotton candy and dry suede. It is cloying in an airy dry sweetness way, not a syrupy way like Allure Pour Homme can be cloying late in the drydown. Paradox smells like stale, cooped-up air in a room of big windows, the air always getting hot and dust bits floating in the daily afternoon sun bath. God it's awful. I know I'm going to mix metaphors, but hell, it smells like an adolescent's version of what virtue in the eyes of adults is. Its smell is like the smile adolescents arrange on their faces to try to look sweet and just what grandma wants. Ugh. It isn't that the scent has no hormones or actually does what mama-don't-allow, it's that the scent denies them and hides them. Somehow actively wiping them out to smell cloyingly virtuous. Some scents remind you that there's fire deep in their loins, but Paradox is so adolescent it inhumanly actually lops them off through pretend.

Truly an awful scent. Reject it for moral reasons alone! (Hehehe.) Oh, and I was happy to trade my bottle away to Finland. (To a great trader and BN member, by the way.)
--Chris

Chris,

first, thanks for your kind words! Your bottle of Paradox found a good home here with me and the scent itself gets much appreciation.

I find your description for Paradox fantastic - like a little piece of poetry I say - and even though I personally really like it I have no difficulties of any kind in seeing it "through your eyes" and sharing your experience. It took me quite a awhile to get into Paradox - I even put it into my swap list, but thank God never traded it away. It smelled sweet, almost to the point of being cloying and yet it carried some freshness as well, but in a "dentist" kinda way. These days I find it's multi-faceted, "unstable" character like a captivating mystery I need to solve and reveal the true nature of this scent...

-Tero-

I found Paradox an utterly vile fragrance... very similar to Paco's Ultraviolet Man. Ultra-sweet... ultra-synthetic. It gives you the sugar without any "tangy" notes to balance it. It's not a rich, thick sweet like Gaultier2 or Pi.... it's more of a surface level saccharine touch.

Thankfully it's quite light.

Maybe some of those who enjoy this scent can describe some of its merits... because, as it stands.. paradox remains one of the few fragrances I absolutely "despise".....

a.

I'm bumping this thread...

Two reasons:

1. I read myself (mentioned by Chris above) that Luca Turin spoke highly of Paradox (the woman's)
2. An acquaintance of mine who I speak about fragrances with ever-so-often, told me he was wearing some vintage Paradox from an old bottle he bought from a perfume store years ago. He wears it and loves it and asked me if I'd heard of it, or smelled it. I haven't so...I was wondering if any of you guys out there in Basenotes have smelled or worn the woman's Paradox. Only one review in the directory (the BN directory lists it as Paradox Blue, instead of the original name, just Paradox): http://www.basenotes.net/ID10211800.html

second that.

Mike, you might be interested to read my take on Paradox Green, which I posted today. Entirely different fragrance from what I hear (and judging by the listed notes), but I rather like that one. I am also interested in at least sampling Paradox Blue.

If Paradox is too much, I suggest Samba Viva for men. While the other Sambas I have are an okay change of pace, Viva is superb. It needs a few minutes for its synthetic qualities to burn off, but after that it's great if you're looking for a well blended light scent that is not aquatic or fruity or flowery.