Samples Of The Day - August 2010 - Page 2

Woo Hoo! I'm not alone! I sprayed on some 68 before bed last night and I just like it so much better. Maybe it's the addition of flowers and the insistent Geurlain vanilla that's in there filling in the gaps from the topnotes down, but I just think it's a 5-star all the way.

Today, on the advice of MTGPROX, I'm testing a Dior Homme flanker, Dior Homme Sport.



Oh, now I see why this isn't one of the ones MTG recommended...

To get it out of the way, Dior Homme Sport has absolutely nothing at all to do with Dior Homme except the bottle and the name. So I'll judge it on its own merits.

It kicked off with a bright mix of lemon and calone (which is immediately familiar because that's the basic recipe for the topnotes of Eternity for Men). The lemon was quickly joined by orange, and then neroli. This stage was actually quite nice - refreshing, not stupidly sweet, and perfect for hot weather.

The heart was that salty herb mix made famous by Acqua di Gio, which I actually kind of like. The problem was the transition. The mix of the sweet citrus and the salty herbs felt kind of fusty and gross. That being said, I think many aquatics smell fusty and gross - if you're a fan of the genre, don't let me put you off. The weird combination actually reminded me remotely of Cool Water (which I hate, but many love).

The base is that metallic "woody amber" note, which I pretty much hate, but that everyone who wears current designer masculine scents seems to love.

So there you have it. Dior Homme Sport's influences are painfully transparent and obvious, but they actually kind of pulled it off. Sure, it's scraping the bottom of the lowest common denominator, but it's actually pretty well put together. If you're a fan of ADG, Cool Water, and Eternity, you should probably do yourself a favor and check out Dior Homme Sport. But if you're looking for a lighter take on the original Dior Homme's vanilla iris, you're not going to find that here...

Thanks for the cool reviews, guys! I've been curious, especially about those Lubins. And I've never even heard of Profumi Del Forte...

Today I’m wearing Versailles Pour Homme by Jean Desprez.



Often mentioned along with Patou Pour Homme Prive as an amazing lost classic, I’m glad I got the chance to check this out.

Versailles is a pretty confusing scent. It’s definitely a classic masculine woody chypre. I find that many of this genre tend to smell similar, but this manages to avoid smelling like an Equipage or Derby clone. The note list is enormous, and everything melts together into a distinctive whole as opposed to modern scents where each note tends to be given its own place. This makes it feel kind of linear, even though it’s definitely going through phases.

The top is sweet and woody. Out of the vial, I got a hit of aldehydic pineapple, but the fruit almost immediately burned off, leaving wood and aldehydes, with a bit of lemony spices. Versailles was much more woody than other classic wood scents I’ve smelled, which mostly smell like chypre elements with some hawthorn. That being said, this still didn’t smell like modern woody scents, either. This wasn’t cedar or the smell of trees in a forest. Instead, it was the smell of plywood or particle board – mixed woods cut with plastics and shellacked (this is thanks to the aldehydes and actually doesn’t smell bad – just not very natural).

Given time, some sage became noticeable, leading to galbanum and the chypre base. But this happens behind the lemony spicy aldehydic wood, which stays the focus of Versailles for most of its life. By the late afternoon, there’s a resinous leather feel, but that plywood keeps going.

As if I’m not being wordy enough already, it’s time for a weird tangent…

Have you ever seen Frank Lloyd Wright’s home interiors? I toured one when I was younger and I clearly remember being struck by how it was beautifully designed but I couldn’t imagine living there. Everything was burnished wood. All the furniture was built in, with tiny desks jutting from the walls and hard, angular chairs and benches. The space was dark and rode a line between futurism and naturalism. Everything from the walls to the built-in furniture was the same wood, polished and curved to the point of resembling something molded from plastic. As high design, it was brilliant, but, even as an adolescent, I questioned the actual functionality of it as a living space. It was classic and artistic, but its specific brand of modernism fused with luxury was very dated (not necessarily in a bad way, but simultaneously not necessarily in a good way, either).

This is what Versaille Pour Homme kept making me think of. The aldehydes give it a feel of retro-furturism, while the woods hint at a naturalism which would become popular in later niche scents. But the combination of the two is very conspicuously not of this time, and isn’t necessarily comfortable, much like Wright’s beautiful but hard and angular furniture. Versailles also exudes a specific kind of luxury that has long since passed. It’s clearly from a time when synthetics were luxurious in their rarity as opposed to ubiquitous and cheap. It exudes a self-importance that today’s scents simply don’t – Now, perfumes mostly sell a name, while Versailles is selling a very specific moneyed artistic experience, which is quite brilliant, but the fact that it actually has a specific personality means that it’s not going to be compatible with everyone out there.

In summary, I’ve enjoyed spending a nice, warm day in Versailles Pour Homme, but I’m not 100% comfortable here. If you enjoy classic woody masculine chypres, this may be heaven-sent. And I’d suggest giving it a sampling in the same way that I think everyone has to try vintage Mitsouko. I’m glad to have had this opportunity (with many thanks to a generous BNer!).

Sits up, intrigued...


Doh! Lost me...

Today I'm wearing Giorgio Beverly Hills Red for Men.



I remember the huge push when this first came out. I managed to wear it for a couple of months using only the fold-out paper samples that came in magazines and department store ads (I was a college freshman with NO money - you know you all did it at some point, too...). At the time, I thought Red for Men was class personified and I dreamed of owning a bottle - it seemed so fancy and mature. Naturally, I had to track down a vintage sample and give it a try with a more experienced nose...

It kicked off like a pretty standard masculine woody chypre, with a combination of lemon verbena and hawthorn, brightened by lavender. Within a few minutes, everything got weird. It smelled like melted wax. My mother used to make candles, and I distinctly remember the smell of her melting unscented wax on the stove - that mix of hot wax and the slightly burnt odor of the old pan being heated up. If forced to pick out the notes, I'd guess that the hot wax smell came as a result of a strange mix of lavender and eucalyptus, while the verbena kept going alongside it.

The waxy smell took hours to go away, as the lavender slowly burned off and the eucalyptus became more prominent. All the while, the whole thing kept getting more and more leathery, but with a weird sweat smell. By the base, Red for Men smelled like a men's locker room crowded with sweaty men (it's not that cumin armpit sweat, but a more general sweat smell) mixed with a new leather jacket. Sniffed closely, I could smell the traditional chypre base in the background, but the most prominent smell in the base was definintely the sweaty leather.

So, after all these years, that's Red for Men. It makes sense in the same way as Drakkar Noir or other weird 80's masculines (this is very much a product of the 80's despite technically being released in 1991). It's kind of dated by its woody chypre structure, but I could see some weird niche company putting out something like this (You too can smell like hot wax night at the gay S&M club!). If you love the classics and don't mind some stank in your powerfrags, you may very well love Red for Men. Personally, I was amazed how familiar it smelled after all these years, but that alone doesn't warrant a bottle purchase for me, and the sweaty waxy weirdness just isn't what I'm into.

Today I've been wearing First by Van Cleef & Arpels.



First kicked off with that classic "white flowers" accord, which is generally done with a mix of rose, ylang, and muguet. It was paired with a big blast of aldehydes. Something in there had a sort of red candy smell (the classic aldehydic kind, not the current fruity floral kind). Eventually, a soapy white musk came in, along with some sandalwood to make it creamier. And that's about it.

In a way, First feels cleaned up compared to the older classics that preceded it (First is from the 70's, while many of the benchmark aldehydic florals - Chanel No 5 and such - are much older). There's a moody sadness, or maybe a spirit of midcentury French ennui that earlier examples have that make them much more interesting than First. It's probably the lack of dark green chypre ingredients, which are conspicuously absent from First, that leaves it feeling pretty, but somehow more superficial than its predecessors. It's like Donna Summer wearing a flower in her hair as a tribute to Billie Holiday. Donna was a fine singer, but she was no Billie Holiday...

Catching up, I also recently wore Six Scents Series One #1 - Urban Tropicalia by Alexandre Herchcovitch & Joachim Correll.



Urban Tropicalia is the fruity floral of the Six Scents Series One lineup. It's based on a mix of tropical fruits - I smell mango and orange and apple, and maybe some cassis and peach, but thankfully no stereotypically tropical coconut. It's a tart smell with hints of green, similar to Byredo's Pulp, but greener, or similar to Escada's Sunset Heat (or even Paris Hilton for Men), but smelling more like fruit and less like a tropical fruit gum.

Pretty quickly, the tart green note turns out to be that stinky tomato leaf note (like Hilde Soliani's infamous Stecca). The fruit makes the tomato leaf wearable, but the mix makes Urban Tropicalia much more challenging than it's discount store counterparts. Alexandre Herchcovitch and Joachim Correll are aparently Brazilian, so this kind of makes sense. Real tropical fruit can have a sweetness that borders on rot, and this combination of sweet/tart fruit and vegetal grossness feels like an artistic expression of that.

Urban Tropicalia eventually dries down to a pretty nondescript soapy sweet base, but the fruit stays with it throughout its life, so it's less of a specific base than a long slow fade of the fruits after the tomato leaf runs its course.

To be honest, I'm not really sure who Urban Tropicalia is aimed at. It's sort of an intelligent fruity floral, but I'm not yet convinced that such a genre is even possible. It's difficult to imagine serious perfumistas or niche aficionados going nuts for something so fruity and sweet, and there's really no way the mainstream will ever track down a scent this obscure. I like Six Scents (they do this for charity and encourage experimentation), but I'm not sure Urban Tropicalia is one of their biggest winners. But if you like Byredo's Pulp, but wish it had more funkiness, or wish for a greener version of the tropical mall scents, this may be perfect for you.

Today I've been wearing the official discontinued grail of Basenotes, Jean Patou Patou Pour Homme Prive.



I have to admit, I just don't get the appeal...

Prive kicked of with a burst of lavender, the dirty, almost animalic kind. It's paired with a dark, dank mossy note (right from the top) that made the lavender feel kind of medicinal. I couldn't help but wonder if there were some aldehydes, too, because there was a plasticky brightness that played against the dark green of the mossy notes. In a way, it reminded me of Drakkar Noir's notorious ammonia note.

Given time, the chypre base elements came through and the gasoline-ish weirdness turned out to be a really harsh, almost leathery burnt pine note played against some sweet green galbanum. Late in the day, that plastic note is still there, but smells more like a big whiff of pure rubbing alcohol. I think it's the leftover lavender reacting with the charred aspect of the pine that makes things feel kind of harsh and medicinal. Admittedly, the mix of moss and galbanum is nice, but you can find that in hundreds of classics, so I'm not sure what the fuss is about.

If this were still in production, I can't help but think that it would be gathering dust next to the discounted Tsar and that Ceasars Las Vegas cologne at the Burlington Coat Factory. There is absolutely nothing even remotely current about Patou Pour Homme Prive (which probably accounts for at least part of its appeal). Better noses than me have declared it a perfect example of a dying breed, and I'm not one to argue, so I'll accept that, but unless you really love that mix of dirty powerhouse and weird unpleasant 80's Drakkar Noir-esque lavender-meets-synthetics, you can probably skip this one, despite the glowing reviews. With no offense intended to Prive's fans, I just don't think this subgenre of classic scents is one that I'm really in to.

Today, I've been wearing another discontinued classic, Moschino Pour Homme.



I've really enjoyed this one. It kicked off with a mace note, which was really quite awesome. It's mace, the cooking spice (it's used in pumpkin pie). It kind of smells like cinnamon or nutmeg, or even chickory. It's kind of sweet, spicy, and nuanced. While it doesn't smell like chocolate or coffee, it has the same kind of brown-hued complexity. It's a wonderful note - I can't believe no one uses it...

The sweet spicy mace dominated the silage, while the smell on my skin was a little less exciting, a pretty standard 80's lavender/leather chypre, but quite well done and without any of those silly gasoline/ammonia/rubbing alcohol notes that were so popular in this sort of frag at the time.

It changed very little over the course of the day. That mace note lasted forever, with the main change being that the whole mix got sweeter as the day went by and the galbanum finally made its way through the lavender and leather. Late in the day, a tiny pinch of vanilla came through underneath the chypre basenotes.

If I were a bigger fan of classic lavender leathery chypres, I would probably be freaking out trying to track down a bottle of this. As such, I certainly want to try other frags based on mace. If you're a fan of sweeter classic chypres (PDN's New York comes to mind) and like the idea of a spicier take on the genre, you'd probably love Moschino Pour Homme. While it's discontinued, lots of places still seem to be selling minis of it - sample while you still can...

For the last couple of nights, I've been testing a discontinued Creed that almost no one ever talks about, Verveine Narcisse.



This very much smells like a classic womens fragrance, a powdery chypre. It goes on with a multi-faceted mix of that classic-Creed lemon (which is actually mostly the verbena from the name). The perfumey tonka and the moss which are usually mostly basenotes are very present from the very top. There's also a sort of a green plant smell, which I'm guessing is the narcissus (it's not a note I'm familiar with) and just a tiny pinch of something minty or maybe camphorous. Within a few minutes, all the notes fuze together into a sort of powdery green mossy tonka smell that makes up most of Verveine Narcisse.

The overall smell of this reminds me of cleaning out my grandmother's house. It's that smell of old clothes and old perfume and the smell of an older lady who gets her hair washed once a week at the salon. It's powdery and a bit stale and there's just a tiny whiff of grossness that's always in the background (which I think is a combination of the tonka and an especially animalic ambergris that arrives more fully a couple of hours in).

The green plant note and the verbena fade first when the ambergris comes in, which eventually leads to a chypre base, heavy on the galbanum and vetiver (I think they're using the ambergris instead of patchouli). The whole life of the scent, until the vetiver end, is powdery.

Verveine Narcisse belongs in the same powdery green chypre family as Geirlain's Chamade, but it doesn't have that beautiful moodiness that gives Chamade and other classics of its type their depth. Oddly, the entire life of the scent seems sped up - the whole trip from top to fading basenotes only lasts about 4 hours, even though it manages to go through all of its transitions instead of just fading early like most short-lived scents do. All in all, Verveine Narcisse is nice if you're into powdery, green, very old-smelling perfumes, but I personally think you could do better with many of the Basenotes favorites (Chamade, vintage Vent Vert, probably a couple of Carons) that are cheaper and easier to find.

Today at work I had a bit of a history lesson thanks to Crown Perfumery Marquis.

Apparently, Crown Perfumery was an English house founded in 1872 in the same style as Trumper or Floris or Penhaligans. They made the same styles of traditional British barbershop scents (the did a spiced lime, as well as a fern and others like we know from the surviving houses).



They were quite popular at the turn of the century and sold to the queen, thus allowing themselves to use their distinctive crown-shaped bottle stoppers.



They basically shut down after World War I, selling their name to a soap company. In the late 90's, Clive Christian (at that point known for his interior design) bought the rights to the name and relauched the company, reproducing their top scents in revamped crown-topped bottles.



A few years later, Clive decided to launch his now-famous much more expensive perfumes under his own name, so he discontinued the Crown Perfumery scents, but kept the bottle shape for himself, as well as a bit of their history (Clive Christian's 1872 is named after the year Crown Perfumery was founded).

I'm assuming that the sample of Marquis that I have is from the 1990's re-release and not the vintage (and that the re-releases weren't 100% faithful to the originals), because it's more of a Creed clone than I can imagine would have been possible in 1928.

It kicked off with a nice orange note, which was thankfully not that horrible faux-orange chemical that smells like Tang on me. It was quickly joined by violet leaf. If you can imagine Green Irish Tweed, but with orange on top instead of GIT's famous bergamot mix, and without the trademark Creed ozone and with less of the violet leaf, that's pretty much what Marquis smelled like for the first few hours. Given time, the violet leaf faded and the scent was taken over by an unexpected sweet, soapy neroli note with a pinch of vetiver, bearing a striking resemblance to Mugler Cologne. It pretty much faded from there without any true basenotes except for the white musk that gave the neroli its soapy smell.

While pretty simple, the whole life of Marquis smelled pleasant and more natural than either GIT or Mugler. It's not an EDP, so it doesn't have the richness of a Creed, though. All in all, it's completely wearable and nice, though a bit unoriginal (I'm still assuming it didn't actually smell like this in 1928, because if it did, we'd all have to rewrite perfume history and give Crown Perfumery credit for inventing modern mens aquatics instead of GIT/Cool Water).

Apparently, a few independent perfume stores still have stock left of the 90's Crown Perfumery re-releases (Parfums Raffy even has sample packs available), so get them while you still can. And if you're looking for a good citrus with a leafy green aquatic edge to it, Marquis may be a good place to start, especially if you're drawn to Creed's GIT or Original Vetiver but just can't fall in love with the Creed synthetics.

Doh - I think you're right. I had a blank-out. Its too hot here... I just edited my review. Urgh.