No, it's actually NOT an AdG clone!

As of late, this has been bothering me quite a bit. So many scents get written off as Aqua Di Gio clones and even moreso, so many Basenoters seem to lump all fresh scents together. It's as if some people sniff any scent with an aquatic note and instantly turn off any further scrutiny and just mentally write it off as another AdG. I should know, I used to do the same - I felt that fresh scents were more or less all the same - the equivalent of pop drivel in music. Of course, they may be the equivalent of pop music, but then even pop music stretches from Josh Groban to Madonna to Eminem and beyond.

The last week or so I've devoted to re-trying the samples of all the fresh scents I had. My intent was to find the right match for me, and so I was scrutinizing them much more carefully than I had in the past, or is possible in the store on a card. I think fresh scents are especially difficult to differentiate on a card in the store; sure it's not hard to tell a lime opening from a bitter grapefruit, but take two orange openings and the differences are going to be harder to detect (not to mention the rest of the scent's development, something that is almost impossible to get an accurate read of from a tester strip).

Fresh and aquatic scents, as a whole, are unquestionably more limited in their diversity by the simple fact that if they stray too far from the guidelines, they become something besides a fresh scent. This is inevitable, but I don't think it's anymore reason to lump them all together than it would be to lump all haikus together because they share the same underlying syllabic structure.

I just get frustrated when I read reviews that say, for instance, that Versace Pour Homme is quite similar to Pi Neo, when nothing is further from the truth. The former is a bitter, sage heavy fresh scent with a light aquatic note in the form of hyacinth and a base of woods while the latter is a sweet citrus aquatic with a fair dose of vanilla. Saying those two are quite similar is like saying Gucci Pour homme and L'Anarchiste are similar because they both make use of a strong cedar note at some point in their development. Writing Z by Zegna off as "just another fresh scent like AdG" (hypothetical example, I'm not taking anyone to task here!) is just willful ignorance on the part of a reviewer as they are really nothing alike.

It just bothers me to see so many reviewers of various fresh scents write them off so quickly without taking the time to analyze the scent and really compare and contrast it - if not in the review then mentally, at least - with other fresh scents. It would be absurd to say "well, all of the CdG incense series feature incense, so if you've smelled one, you've smelled them all" - and yet that kind of mentality seems to be accepted and indirectly promoted (via acceptance) when it comes to light, fresh, aquatic scents. Again I say, like haiku, or any limited form such as the 12 bar blues, the genre as a whole has limitations but that is what makes it what it is (nobody complains that a fougere is built around lavender, oakmoss and coumarin), and that I think we do a disservice to ourselves and especially to others when we write reviews in haste, quickly judging a frag for superficial similarities to something else when we didn't have the intent to try and appreciate it for what it is in the first place.

Are fresh scents unfairly discriminated against as a whole? Am I alone in feeling this way? Well, I should hope not, and I hope that I can urge some others out there who may be just like I was - 'above' fresh scents and unwilling to sniff another 'generic consumer oriented concotion' more than superficially since that is all it deserved - into actually evaluating them in detail. It will help us get clearer reviews and direct people to the fresh scents most suitable towards them, but perhaps most importantly, it will help us all grow our noses and grow our ability to differentiate subtle differences in all scents, and hence increase our appreciation for this passion as a whole.

The thing is, superficially many may seem the same, but the term 'aquatic' is really as generic as say, 'oriential.' Many aquatics don't smell particularly watery to me (I'm with Surfacing - AdG doesn't smell aquatic to me but more like sweet melons and tea). Many smell fresh, citrusy, grassy. Versace PH, the one that I've sampeld that most suits me, smells a bit of water as a hyacinth note interplays with the sage, but then dries down to sage with a hint of citrus over the smell of dusty dry stones. Z Zegna has a wonderful citrus herb opening and then dries down to a grassier note with some musk - I had sampled this once ages ago - from a sample and on my skin - and literally couldn't remember a thing about it when I went to pick it up again except that it was "a fresh aquatic." I don't think my inability to recall anything about it was because it's too generic (it's really not), but more my refusal to properly evaluate it. Turns out that I don't like its drydown so much (the musky note doesn't work so well on me), but it's definitely nothing like AdG, Versace PH, Le Roy Soleil, etc etc.

That's why I don't understand writing off the category as a whole. There is such variation within it, if we'd only sniff with an open nose and open mind, that writing off the category as a whole is like a fan of fresh scents refusing to wear or even sniff anything that would be too heavy to qualify as a 'fresh scent.' Of course, if you never feel inclined to wear light scents such as these, I can not fault you, and I appreciate those who acknowledge they don't like the genre and subsequently don't write superficial remarks about scents - to each their own and I've no fault with that. I just think that among the myriad of fresh scents there are likely some that would impress even the most diehard Kouros and Yatagan (my SoTE!) fans.

While you may, I don't think many do draw a distinction between aquatic and fresh scents, and quite frankly I'm not sure there's always a clear divide, and that's why I used the far more generic "fresh" scents categorization. The reviews for Versace PH equate it to AdG and Pi Neo, for instance, although I find that it has only a passing similarity to the former. But Michael Edwards' classification or not, many will sniff the topnotes of the Versace and write it off as those in the reviews have. I think JamieB's review does it far more justice than the others.

Z Zegna is citrus and grass with a light touch of herbs to this nose, with a musky drydown (that unfortunately turns into a 'Windex note' on my skin), but I don't really see how it's aquatic in the sense that say, Bulgari Aqua is.

So what is it that really makes a scent aquatic versus say a fresh citrus? The inclusion of calone? The inclusion of whatever chemical is so predominant in Azzaro Chrome (and also Montale's Sandflowers, which is like a smoother Chrome)? Based on what various people have labeled "just another aquatic" - and having sniffed them and seen some very vast differences - the term "just another aquatic" means nothing to me except that the scent is lighter than say Opium or M7.

I don't have any issue with people who dislike light or fresh scents as long as they are not writing reviews of scents - which some well known and respected reviewers do - they don't care to analyze at all, as it can steer newbies away from good scents and I think, directly or indirectly, influence those who respect that reviewer's opinion to write off the scent prematurely (Oh, ReviewerX who has great taste thinks this frag is worthless, I might as well not even sniff it.)

Strangely, some scents seem to be immune from this effect, such as Mugler Cologne, and I don't fully understand why.

Well, I don't claim that Versace PH is a great fragrance by traditional standards, it just resonated with me in a sense. And while I try to judge a fragrance's composition as objectively as possible, I obviously use only subjective judgement when deciding if something is full bottle worthy to me. And yes, I guess it was a revelation in the sense that I didn't ask for the sample, and after a quick dab of it on my hand in the parking lot of Macys I had written it off as, and I think my exact words were "Eh, just another fresh scent" - and then here I am with a full bottle of it on the way!

I only wore the sample again one day by chance when I didn't know what else to wear, and found that it was quite nice, especially the scent carried in its sillage. This is what started me on my fresh scent escapade and I only wish I had more actual samples of fresh scents to test as I've not found any two from all I've tried to be so close to one another as to be indistinguishable when given a true full wearing. Dabbing them on an arm already covered in other scents is like trying to pick out the subtleties of a violin concerto while heavy metal is blasting from the speakers in an adjacent room.

As much as this started as a rant I'd like to point out that one of my main reasons for posting this was that, opening my mind to this category of scents has been thoroughly enjoyable and rewarding, as suddenly I've got a whole slew of new scents to explore, and a whole slew of new scent experiences to use in cross-analysis when evaluating new scents. It's also really cemented how useless anything but a real sample of a fragrance is when trying to do any in depth anaylsis.