Givenchy kicks rears

I've meant to write a thread on this theme for a long time. The theme is Givenchy makes superior, nay, better than superior, scents for men. Givenchy stuff kicks a**.

In my notebook I tried to break the scents down into grade categories so I could make a logical sounding review as I went through first tier, then second and third tier stuff from the house, but my notebook notes are chaotic and the truth is I can't decide which in my opinion are always second tier. Four stand always at the top though: Gentleman, Xeryus, Insensé, and Monsieur. These are ideal men's fragrances. No one who wears one of them is making a mistake. Each shows superior taste.

Gentleman. Hints of rose and I wonder if cedar and civet over the best and most rounded patchouli scent on the mainstream market. I got to know this scent twenty-five years ago in high school and it has shaped my nose as the balance of beautiful patchouli. I smell this now and I say "perfect." All the balance is there, all the smooth corners, all the woods sanded with the finest grade of sandpaper that the resulting surface is almost a cushion to the touch. Patchouli is usually unruly and people mock it as a hippie scent. BS! Gentleman puts the lie to that--smell it yourself and the total package of refinement is simply so clear. Nothing like group food feeds. Conversational word on many threads here is that the current bottles are slightly inferior to earlier ones. I've smelled both. The difference is insignificant. The currently available bottles down at the store are still a superior scent.

Xeryus. I have less to observe about this one, but it is similarly perfect. I think it is the house's "wild side" scent. It has a cold heart note that is steel like, geranium like, and austere. It haunts me because I know its smell even from memory--know the smell by brain alone without getting my bottle out to smell. Unforgettable. It's austere and cold, but in a way that is interesting--interesting in the sense that one wants to get closer to it to figure it out. This stuff never gets tired. This stuff is so damned cool!

Insensé. Talk about daring departure. This is the house's heavy floral scent for men. I have the suspicion that most mainstream houses out there would be afraid to make a men's scent that is so obviously a floral. This one, however, all I can say is that it truly succeeds. Summer wildflowers in a bottle. Fantastic stuff. No bowl of flowers. Fresh flowing pastoral florals over a cedar base. A delight. Lasts forever too. Amazing with my blue striped dress shirt. Almost with a dandelion note too. Fantastic. Seems harder to find lately. I hope that's not true outside my area.

Monsieur. To be honest it took me a while to warm up to this one. It seemed the old skool style vinegar sour type of scent to me forever--citrus, verbena, vetiver. I bought a bottle cheap when I saw one very cheap. Now I get nothing but happiness out of it. Longevity seemed to be a problem, but what the heck, the more times I wore the stuff the longer its been lasting on me. I'm almost going to be unfair to this one as I write the following, but Monsieur almost seems to be an aquatic to me. It smells like really good water. It is long before the aquatic trend came to every corner's fragrance selection, but Monsieur does a gentleman's fresh, clean, breezy, sun-dried cotton clothing scent better than so many. Classic classic classic. Smell it and you know already that it has been part of your nose's life. I guess that's what I meant when I smelled the old skool thing to it. A delight to wear and make a part of everyone else's nose life.

Those are the top offerings from the house as my nose ranks them. Givenchy Pour Homme is nice indeed, but it never won me over. I dislike Givenchy Pour Homme in the blue label. I dislike all the flanker Insensé scents, especially Ultramarine. Stay away from those and get a whiff of the original Insensé only. I also never warmed to the candy sweetness element of Xeryus Rouge.

One more thing. After decades Givenchy brought back Vetyver. I never smelled the original so I can't compare them, but a comparison isn't the point of this post. Vetyver is a fantastic scent now available, presumably brought back with the original recipe in mind. Would that other houses would follow this great idea and bring some others back! 2007 was awash with vetivers that smelled like Carven's and Givenchy's, so don't expect vetiver revelations from this one, but expect a great and happy scent from it. That's what I get.

One house that makes all of the above superior scents from a short list of men's scents is killing.
--Chris

Gentlemen,
You’re all too kind. Thanks very much for the kind words and praise. It feels good when you get a chance to put some writing behind something you like and believe in, no?

Another great thing about Givenchy stuff is that it’s not going to break your wallet. Quality and true refinement that even fits in a budget. The re-issue of Vetyver was steep because I bought it at retail, and that was US$65. That’s 100ml size too. That’s half the cost of a Lutens 50ml bottle, for example. And no lost classiness at all. I think I’ve seen everything else from online dealers at the usual fraction of the price. That makes wearing them a further mental pleasure for certain.

Xenophon, LightninrodDan, and all you Pi lovers. I hear you. I’ve never gotten the Pi thing in my blood though, so I can’t say for me that it sings, but Pi further says something about the house’s products--like ChuckW says, Givenchy scents SAY something. Even if we don’t like Pi, we all know it. It stands out. It is THERE. Is that balls or what? It’s not all hidden, temperamental, no edge, no nothing. It’s there and it says what it is. It’s like they skipped the focus group wishy washy advice when it came to that stage. Maybe they even skipped that stage with it altogether. I don’t go for heavy vanilla scents in general, so Pi isn’t really for me, but it is a piece of sculpture in scent that you can’t not look at when you walk around it in the museum.

And again, like ChuckW says, YOU CAN SMELL Givenchy stuff. Loud and bold, thank god. Well said! Damn straight too. Vision, quality, and production value. You can put it on and not worry. Like a man’s scent is supposed to be.

MikePerez, I almost want to say fie on you, my friend! Get the to the Givenchy Gentleman sales person now! I think you’ll leave with a lot of respect for the juice. I’ve got to agree with Hirch though, that the current bottle’s wet insides are different from my bottle’s, but also, I sincerely believe the match is so good that it really doesn’t matter. I wish things were always as grand as they were in the ideal first pressing of the scent, but if that truly cannot be any more, I’ll be very happy to replace my bottle with a current one. If all reformulations could be this good, we would have little to complain about. I’m sure several other fine members will disagree with me, and that’s always cool, but like Levente, Smeller, and all the others mentioning Gentleman in their list of highest regard, I think the reformulation keeps the stuff up there.

Whoops, I meant Jenson when I said Levente in that last sentence. Classic and perfect is right. Levente brings up the other great mainstream men’s floral, and it’s probably one more special than Insensé. Paco Rabanne’s Ténéré is another perfectly masculine floral, that is cold, dark, wet, hinted with honey and decay, and cool, cool, cool like they don’t make ‘em anymore. I think it tops the masculine floral genre. Insensé isn’t cool like that though, it’s bright daylight. It’s turning your car south into the summer sun around noon when you’re crossing the prairie and you don’t have any sunglasses. You squint because of the bright light and the hood of your car has no color because of the reflection on it. I don’t think it’s been discontinued, as Heythatslife wonders, but I could be wrong about that. I think it is probably in very limited distribution, though, and might be harder in some markets, countries, continents. It might be very easy in others, say, as Renato always tells us how abundant Aramis is down under. I imagine some online stores have it.

Mostapha brings up Very Irresistable, and blast if that’s not one that I forgot about when I tried making a list of Givenchies. I just completely forgot that it’s out there. I’ll need to give it a sniff. I did when it first came out, and I remember it as a gourmand influenced something, but that’s not enough.

Peevish Yolk, yes, you’ve got to get Monsieur! Monsieur is the type of scent that might even be available in those huge 400ml bottles that some European stores can carry. It’s that kind of scent--meant for he who buys big bottles in the granddad style! I sure hope it is, at least. Givenchy released a Monsieur II once and I don’t know what happened to that or even what it’s like, but I think it’s listed on the Basenotes directory and probably pops up on eBay sometimes. Not likely that anyone smells of it anymore is my guess, and not that it matters.

Mikey and MikePerez are Xeryus lovers with me and several of you. I can’t get enough of that stuff, and you’re all right pointing out the similarity with NR. Good things come around again, I guess. Xeryus is so simple, so direct, and so complicated at the same time. Truly from an era with Kouros, JHL, Anteaus, and Aramis.

Mikey also mentions Greenergy, along with Words. I’ve never smelled that! Curse. I’ve read here that it is straight green with very little change from top through all the drydown. I think the rep is thus that it’s a bit dull. I’m curious to hear other thoughts on it, but it’s another one Givenchy put some effort into trying out. When I find some it’ll be easy being green in it.

Scentologist asks whether Vetyver is only in boutiques. I bought mine the week it came out at Nordstrom, which I think was the first place it was rolled out in the states. I bet other standard brick and mortar stores, such that exist anymore, now have it or can get it. I paid $65 for it, as stated above. Trumpet_Guy and I have had different experiences of its longevity. I think he’s reported it having shorter duration while I’ve gotten a full day of 12 to 16 hours from it.

Nicolas says Pour Homme missed the mark. I’ve got to agree. To me it feels like half a scent, sort of like dried fruit is tough and raw and half the impact a good juicy slice of whatever fruit it was was. Pour Homme smells like dried fruit too, and in a good way. The dried wine, the dried wood casks, and all the other things in there are nice, but they’re just too far away in any sniff of the stuff. So sniffs of it are unsatisfying. I don’t get it, but it’s not disagreeable, and it’s not really like anything else out there. I’d certainly wear lots of things before it, like VC&A PH, for example, which is a heavy hitter, or the king of dried and almost rotting stuff, Anteaus.

The house makes fun and enduring stuff. And it brings some stuff back too. A great model to follow.
--Chris

Sniff, for me I think the juice is the same or pretty much the same. I'd say it's the same right off, because Givenchy never stopped making Monsieur and thus never "re-introduced" it in the new serie bottles. So I strongly doubt there's any difference. However, I'm just a consumer and there was a post here in which someone mentioned this serie line had had tweaks done to use contemporary ingredients or something. I don't recall the post so DO NOT take my memory of it for truth, and don't necessarily take the post itself for truth either. It could be wrong or could be referring to other parts of the serie, which includes several women's scents.

That's the only hint I've encountered of a difference in the juices and it is a slight hint and a slight possibility. When I smelled the Monsieur in a serie bottle at the store it smelled the same to me. That was only a wrist test though.

If you remain in doubt or remain concerned I'm sure online discount houses are still selling the old style bottles of the stuff, and probably pretty cheap.

My gut says to me you have very little to worry about. If anyone else has firmer information I certainly hope he/she/they post it here to help both of us.
--Chris

Bring on the disagreement! Part of what thinking is all about.

YSL and Chanel sure make great stuff, but I sure disagree about the L'Occitane.
--Chris

I've neglected this thread for too long. Heavens--I've allowed Renato's and Wicozani's untruths go unchallenged for too long! A shame on my reputation, I tell you.

Renato writes:

Wicozani agrees with the Ultramarine judgment! The sky is falling, my friends, and a disaster is upon us. Renato and Wicozani have had the same KoolAide.

DON'T LISTEN to Renato. Givenchy Insensé Ultramarine is unworthy of being sold as a body fragrance. What is it good for, smell wise? Windex--the kitchen appliance cleaner in the spray bottle. They are even the exact same color. God this stuff is awful. Don't listen to Renato. If you do, and try this awful stuff (cheap in the states at Perfumania stores, last I checked), small rodents and large bugs will chew your feet while you sleep. It's that bad. Dreck that says nothing. Has no character. Smells of too much clothes washing and too many dryer sheets. God it's awful. A smell that doesn't even speak.

True story: back in the old Yahoo days of this forum AmirHongKong, an agressive contributor who I miss very much, asked what scent to wear when breaking up with a woman in whom he had no interest. Who knows how it even started, since he said he never had any real interest in her, but that's life for you, no? Anyway, she was devoted completely to Amir's happiness and wanted to be until the end of her days. Yikes, Amir said, I need to ask my Basenotes brethren what smell to wear when I break this heart really painfully. Can't be a nice smell, can it?

No it can't. Givenchy Insensé Ultramarine to the rescue! There's no other scent for breaking hearts it's that bad. Says nothing. Makes smellers bored. Kills adventure. Runs away from naughtyness. The scent of naiveté, I tell you! The smell of no nose language whatsoever. Pathos in a bottle--make that bathos in a bottle. Amir thought that might be just the right ticket to persuading the woman she was better off without him. No doubt they're both better off today too--thanks to Ultramarine.

My stars, I like a good scent that spanks me with something weird, but BELIEVE ME, there's nothing weird, there's nothing nice, there's nothing at all that makes sense or gives meaning to use of the nostrils, in Givenchy Insensé Ultramarine!

Wear it to show you're unworthy. That's it's value. And what I think of that Renato.
--Chris

Renato,
Yes, my friend, it is indeed sad that Creed didn't make this scent. If Creed did, then at least we'd know what famous people wore it. Or, excuse me, what boring people. John C. Milquetoast would be on the Creed Ultramarine list of greats, along with Nathanial M. Blah and David B. Mungiecake.

I also agree with you that Amir might have been wise to wear What About Adam at that crucial juncture of romantic life, but I'm comforted that you've come around to sanity regarding the delights of Quorum.

Speaking of sanity, as True Story No.2 proves, dear readers of this thread, visit Renato, have engaging conversation, look at the telescopes, enjoy the company--great guy, thoughtful in all ways, wonderful wife, but DON'T drink the water at his house! There's something in it I tell you.
--Chris